HUNGARY: On Good Behavior

Hungary was a vestigially feudal country when the Communists took it over in 1944 in their sweep toward Vienna. The conquerors' remedy was the one Lenin had prescribed for Russia: speedy industrialization. With the same ruthless disregard for human life which characterized Stalin's carrying out of the Leninist injunction, they pursued this end: farmlands were collectivized, workers brutally regimented, living standards depressed. Last week, in a swift move that had overtones of the great Moscow turnabout of the '20s, the Hungarian Communists reversed their program.

Premier Matyas Rakosi, a bullet-headed Bolshevik with a 35-year record of service to the party (including...

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