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Soviet Presidium Members Anastas Mikoyan and Mikhail Suslov were said to be in Budapest working out a "solution." One solution that now appeared possible was one that a week ago seemed utterly improbable: the return of deposed Premier Imre Nagy. From his hideout in the small greystone two-storied Yugoslav embassy in Stalin Square (where a Soviet tankist a week earlier had killed the embassy's First Secretary Milenko Milov-nov), the intransigent Nagy sent word that he would have no dealings with Kadar. But Budapest's workers insisted that he was the only man they would trust to "ensure the achievements of our Revolution." Said a member of the Csepel workers' council: "We respect Nagy and we are anxious for him, and we wish that he remain in the Yugoslav embassy. First, there is no guarantee that the Soviets will not arrest him when he leaves and, second, what is the use of his taking over when he can't achieve the withdrawal of the Rus sians?" Defiant, but sensible of their lives, some of the workers' councils insisted that they wanted no armed help from the West, which might jeopardize their fight; they were confident they could win alone. The fact is, that for all their tanks, the Communists were bereft of one necessary ingredient of Soviet control, a trustworthy party apparatus among the people themselves, able to spot and block trouble.
At week's end Janos Kadar, party secretary without a real party, in a final desperate effort to end the general strike, issued a back-to-work ultimatum. To back up Kadar's stand Soviet Major General Grubennyik said that a further 20 Soviet divisions, comprising 200,000 men, were entering Hungary. Kadar assured the workers' councils that, once the strike had ended, the Red army would withdraw. No one trusted Kadar, but the Central Workers' Committee of Budapest, after a stormy debate at the Fisvek Club, agreed to try him out, reserving the right to strike again if he failed in his promise. The question was whether the workers, like the miners, who threatened to flood the pits rather than accept Kadar, would heed the bidding of their committee or Grubennyik's threat. If they did not, said the unknown Telex operator, the only thing left to the Soviet leaders was to bring Nagy back. Clattered irrepressible Budapest's irrepressible ghostwriter:
THE RUSSIANS WON THE BATTLE BUT THEY HAVE LOST THE WAR.