Out of the chaos of Hungary's first "five days of freedom," when everybody could plainly see that the Communists had no true strength anywhere in the country, sprang a new kind of organization, the "workers' councils." They were modeled on Communist Tito's workers' guilds. Their leaders were untrained in rebellion and unskilled in maneuver, but their strength was that they could genuinely claim to speak for the people. Ever since the Russians put Puppet Janos Kadar on the throne, he has sought by persuasion, threat and promise to undermine the workers' councils. He understood clearly, as did they, that he must dominate them, or be himself destroyed. Last week the test began in earnest.
In a month of hasty organization, the workers' councils were able to form a central executive, called the Central Workers' Council, with headquarters on the fifth floor of a building in Budapest's Stalin Square. Here, a fortnight ago, Chairman Sandor Racz, a radio and telephone-equipment worker, his second in command, Sandor Bari, and eight other members of the executive considered a sinister resolu tion passed by Radar's stooge Communist Party. The workers' councils, said
Kadar's men, were being used to take power away from legal branches of government and "must be stopped by arms." "This is a declaration of war against the workers," said one council member.
"Come Around." The Central Council decided to call a 48-hour protest strike. There was only one way the council could notify the scores of widely separated factory councils, without also tipping off the police: by radio. There were no longer freedom radio transmitters in Hungary, but the Central Council left, in a place where it knew members of the foreign press corps would pick it up, a resolution calling for a general strike. Then it went into hiding, trusting that the foreign correspondents would get the story out, and that Radio Free Europe, the Voice of America and the BBC would bounce it back into Hungary so that every factory council would hear it.
Unfortunately, the police got word of the coming strike. Kadar slapped martial law on the country, cut off all outgoing telephone circuits. Then he quietly took over the Central Council telephones in their headquarters. Factory and council representatives, mystified by rumors, called up asking, "What's the decision?" Kadar's men replied: "Can't tell you on the phone. Come around." One by one the factory-council representatives were arrested.
Then a break came. On a routine call from another satellite capital, Reuters news agency got through to Budapest by accident, picked up the strike story. All that day the world's free radio stations boomed the Central Council's strike resolution into Hungary. Next morning there was a complete general strike.
In the big industrial towns of Gyor,