Hungarians Split Over Hard-Liners : Reformers in New Party May Jettison Old-Line Communists

The nation’s renamed and realigned ruling political party, now called the Hungarian Socialist Party, was suffering through an overdose of chaotic democracy Sunday as reform factions debated whether to jettison old-line Communist figures, and if so, how.

As the factions met in tempestuous closed sessions, the “radical” reformers complained that a broad compromise platform adopted by the party Saturday left too much room for the party’s Communist old guard.

Along with the compromise platform, the party adopted the change in its name Saturday, scrapping the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party label under which Communists have ruled Hungary since the late 1940s.

But the most vociferous of the reformers say the party must eject what some of them refer to as “Stalinist elements” if it is to escape being regarded by the Hungarian public as the same ruling clique operating under a new name.

Free Elections Due

The issue has taken on some urgency. Next spring, for the first time, the party faces the prospect of fully-free parliamentary elections. The party’s miserable showing in four recent by-elections has given it little cause for optimism.

Along with arguments over whether to embark on a “cleansing” process, party figures were trying to sort out the meaning of the compromise platform, including such thorny issues as how to dispose of the party’s vast assets, when to withdraw ubiquitous party offices from factories and workplaces and what powers to grant to a new party committee on ethics.

The free-for-all political wheeling-and-dealing, in the once-tightly-controlled forum of a party congress, was a dizzying experience to many of the delegates, none of whom could be certain of the exact outcome.

‘Real Democracy’

“It’s a real democracy,” said one observer from the Hungarian Foreign Ministry. “It is not going according to some pre-written script. You can jump on the bandwagon or you can go off on your own. No one knows exactly what is going to happen.”

Although the tent of compromise erected by the party swayed heavily in the rhetorical winds, it seemed likely to stand, anchored mainly by the force of Imre Pozsgay, the party’s leading reformer, who so far has carefully avoided moves that would severely restrict the “new” party’s membership base.

Pozsgay, who is likely to take a post as vice president of the party, has already launched his campaign for the presidency of Hungary. Political operatives in the party and in opposition groups say that Pozsgay’s chances are good because he is one Communist (now Socialist) party politician with some public support--and high name recognition.

At the same time, however, Pozsgay needs an organizational base for his campaign, and it is in his interest to hold in the new party as many members as possible, excluding only the hard-line figures who are publicly identified with resisting the party’s reform drive.

Pal Vastagh, a party leader from Csongrad county, agreed that the party’s main concern was the coming election. “Before, the party was artificial,” he said. “Now we will have to fight for every member.” He said that he was concerned over how the changes would be received by the party’s more conservative membership in the countryside.

Although Vastagh was one of the most active members of Pozsgay’s group of reformers, he said he would have no problem taking aboard some of the party’s old hard-liners, as long as they agreed to the changes. The comment seemed to be a close reflection of the leadership’s intent to keep the party’s base as broad as possible.

The Socialist Workers’ Party chairman, Rezsoe Nyers, is in line to become president of the new party. The radical reformers were complaining bitterly Sunday that a group of opportunists “and rats”--ones thought to be allied with the party’s left-wing camp--had thrown in their lot with the group called the People’s Democrats, and were seeking protection under Nyers’ wing.

“There are a lot of Stalinists in the People’s Democrats,” said Csaba Vass, one of the leaders of the reform circle’s group, the spearhead reform faction that Pozsgay himself put together as a political base in the party.

“We have some moral capital,” Vass said. “But if we include the Stalinists, we will lose that capital.” The problem, he said, was how to exclude them, without undergoing a purge process that would have unfortunate historical echoes.

“The problem is that as a democratic party we have to let them in, if they agree with the platform. The party could not establish a screening process,” he said, “but it could establish a committee on ethics, which could be empowered to investigate questions of political morality--and make the results public.”

Such a process, he said, would likely discourage membership applications from persons whose past party activities would be called into question in the new liberal atmosphere.

Some of the party’s leading figures, such as Karoly Grosz, have already indicated they will bow out of politics. Grosz, who shared the four-man party Presidium of the workers’ party, in fact helped accelerate the reform course of the party in May, 1988, when he led the party’s move to oust the late Janos Kadar as party leader.