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The Russians had a political youth organization called DISZ to keep an eye on young intellectuals like Janos, but nobody took it seriously. One evening last summer, Janos and three friends met up with the top Moscow-trained DISZ leader, drunk and convivial in a restaurant, and one of Janos' friends suggested that what DISZ needed was a social club where young Communists could sit around, drink tea and play chess. A few days later, DISZ opened the Kossuth Club at its headquarters on Republic Square. Janos and his circle sent out word: use the club.
As Budapest's young Communist intellectuals crowded into the Kossuth Club, another suggestion was made to DISZ: Why not form a discussion group, strictly within the club, of course? The discussion group quickly became the hottest thing in town. It was called the Petofi Club.
Both clubs were named after Hungarian revolutionaries, which suited the Russian book, but neither the Russians nor their Hungarian stooges seemed to realize that the names of Kossuth and Petofi were dangerously charged with patriotic and nationalist sentiment. In September 2,000 young Communists crowded into the Petofi Club to hear a discussion on the Communist-controlled press. The meeting had been packed with old hard-core Communists and AVH men, but nevertheless the debate was free and furious. Janos and his friends left feeling that they had scored heavily against the system.
Janos dreamed of a still larger meeting that might finish with a demonstration in Parliament Square, demanding that Imre Nagy, who had been Premier during the "new look" period after Stalin's death, be reinstated. But the Central Committee got wind of their plans and suppressed the Petofi Club. Janos despaired: "We are too young to be followed by the people. We are unknown. We must start organizing and think in terms of years of underground work." Janos had been excited by the news from Poland of Gomulka's successful defiance of Khrushchev, and sensed that there was a corresponding force waiting to be released in Hungary.
Forbidden to meet as a discussion group, a number of Petofi hotheads gathered together at the monument of Sandor Petofi on the morning of Oct. 23. Before a group that grew in size every minute, a young actor, holding a volume of Petofi's poems, recited a poem famous in the 1848 revolution. Many onlookers wept, and by unspoken consent it was decided to go to the statue of General Bem, the Polish general who led the Hungarians and was crushed by the Russians the following year. Without orders from anyone, the crowd formed in ranks six abreast, crossed the Chain Bridge to the west bank of the Danube.
Janos Feher, slight, intense, with his shock of unruly hair and Roman nose, remained aloof from this excitement. "It's too early," he warned his friends. During the afternoon he stood by impassively as the crowd, still orderly and unled, came finally to Parliament House. It was Communist Party Boss Erno Gero, just returned from a visit to Tito, who touched off the fuse. In a radio speech, Gero accused the people of "provocations." Surging toward Radio Budapest, the crowd demanded the right to be heard. The AVH guards began shooting.