Hungary has carefully nurtured its reputation as the least repressive country in the Soviet bloc. That image probably contributed to the selection of Budapest as site of the 35-nation conference that opened last week to discuss cultural issues, one of the subjects of the 1975 Helsinki Accords. Even more impressive was Hungary's decision to grant visas to a handful of Western writers to stage a simultaneous but unofficial symposium across town with dissidents and human-rights activists from Eastern Europe.
The air of tolerance for such open dissent soon evaporated. The writers were told that the hall they had booked at the...
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