Hungary’s Ruling Party OKs Reformers : Liberals Given Key Posts as Renamed Socialists Avert a Schism

Reformers in Hungary’s newly reorganized and renamed ruling party pushed through a leadership slate dominated by liberals Monday. But it took a serious threat to bolt the party--and the specter of a disastrous three-way party split--in order for the reformers to carry the day.

The battle for control of the party went on primarily in back rooms as the reformers argued it out with elder party barons, insisting on the need to forge a new public personality for the once-orthodox Communist Party that has dominated Hungarian politics for 33 years.

In what has been a watershed party congress, the party Saturday dropped its old name, the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party, and adopted its new one, the Hungarian Socialist Party. Founding documents say the party’s new goals are a free-market economy and a democratically elected Parliament, as well as a competitive party with Euro-Communist and social democratic leanings.

Discards Marxist-Leninist Line

It has also officially discarded its Marxist-Leninist ideological baggage, making it the first East Bloc ruling party to part company with a line once strictly dictated by Moscow.

“There was a need to add some more people to the reform line,” said Attila Agh, one of the reform delegates. “We also needed to give some fuller representation to the countryside.”

Out of 24 seats on the party’s policy-setting Presidium, sources said, the reform forces--led by Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth--succeeded in winning at least 14 seats.

Party liberals said they are encouraged that 13 of the new members of the Presidium--which corresponds to the party’s old Politburo--had never before held high positions in the party.

“It is a very liberal lineup,” said one reform-oriented delegate. “I think it is a very good result.”

Included in the group are the party’s leading liberals--Imre Pozsgay, now minister of state and an announced candidate for the Hungarian presidency; Gyula Horn, the foreign minister who precipitated the East German refugee crisis by opening Hungary’s borders with the West; Rezsoe Nyers, the party chairman, whose reform credentials extend back 20 years in Hungarian politics, and Nemeth.

But for all its historic shift, the party’s leading reformers have a well-grounded fear that the change may not be sufficient to overcome years of Communist economic, political and cultural domination, and that upcoming parliamentary elections--the first fully free elections here in 40 years--will send them to resounding defeat.

Four by-elections in the last year, in which Communists were resoundingly defeated, have given the party a dismal forecast of its fortunes. Most well-informed political observers say the party will be lucky to capture 20% of the seats in the new Parliament.

In the face of those gloomy predictions, the balance of power in the party has swung clearly to the reformers.

But the congress--notable as a Communist Party congress that actually voted itself out of existance--still has had to deal with old-line party concerns for unity and stability, despite its proclamation of change.

The Hungarians hashing all this out at the congress were faced with a decision over whether to go for a wholesale revamping of the party--including the public expulsion of its old-line members and an embarrassingly open washing of political dirty linen.

Nyers, whose reformist credentials are somewhat colored by his old-line instincts to preserve party unity, attempted to placate party conservatives but found himself in a head-to-head contest Monday with Nemeth, who pressed for a party leadership that would offer the public a clear image of change.

Party sources said Nemeth and Pozsgay threatened to take their followers out of the party if Nyers, who had been tapped as party chairman, refused to accept a clear reformist majority in the new Presidium.

Although the negotiations were said to have hung in the balance for several tense hours, Nyers relented, and the number of Presidium members was expanded to 24 from 21, with the decisive balance going to Nemeth’s reformers.

A split would have been disastrous to Pozsgay, whose campaign for the Hungarian presidency depends on having a party base for organizational support. If the party had split--a likely three-way cleavage between radical reformers, moderates and hard-liners--its considerable organizational assests would have been negated.

Long-Term Problems

However, the long-term fortunes of the party do not seem bright, and some of the radical reformers believe their interests may have been better served by a noisy severance of party connections.

These elements say that the party cannot avoid a debacle at the polls next year and argue that they stand a better chance of forming a truly new and competitive party by emphasizing their departure from their Communist antecedents.

The party’s congress was remarkable, participants said, for its unscripted, almost improvisational quality. For the first time in the party’s history, they noted with some amazement, the proceedings took on some of the unpredictable nature of the kind of political convention not seen in this part of the world for 40 years.

It was also likely, they noted, that it would be the last time the party would be able to attract the attention it once naturally assumed as the ruling political force in Hungary.