The Year that Changed the World by Michael Meyer

however, Nemeth felt he could defer a visit no longer. Hungary’s reforms were entering a crucial—and worrisome—phase. He would soon announce that free elections would be held, possibly before the end of the year. Kalman Kulcsar, his justice minister, was finishing the new constitution, with full guarantees of free speech and private property. It wasn’t just socialism with a human face. It was… a human face, period.
    Nemeth wanted to make sure he was not going too far, or too fast. Only one person could answer that question. So Nemeth wrote to Mikhail Gorbachev, asking for a meeting in the first week of March. His timing was influenced by another factor. Communist party secretary Karoly Grosz planned to see Gorbachev, as well. That visit was scheduled for March 23–24. Nemeth told Gorbachev that, as Hungary’s head of state, he too should be meeting with the Soviet leader and, in recognition of diplomatic protocol, should be first. Privately he feared that Grosz would undermine both him and his government’s reforms by casting them as a threat to the party’s continued hold on power—which would, in fact, be precisely what happened.
    Nemeth had requested an hour’s audience. Instead, he was offered twenty minutes. “Gorbachev and I were alone, each with an aide.” Describing his plans for democracy in Hungary, and why he thought it necessary, Nemeth told Gorbachev plainly what the consequencescould be—a popular vote that might drive the communists from office. How would Moscow react, he wanted to know.
    Gorbachev was taken aback. The longer the two men spoke, the more agitated Gorbachev became. “He was very angry,” Nemeth recalled years later. “‘I do not agree with this “Hungarian way,”’ Gorbachev said. ‘The proper path is to go back to the roots of Leninism.’” He sternly urged Nemeth to follow the guidance of his boss, the correct-thinking General Secretary Grosz, who opposed any course that might undermine the authority and leading role of the communist party.
    Now it was Nemeth’s turn to be shocked. He had expected to find a fellow reformer, a sympathetic ear, even an ally in his fight against Grosz and others who resisted too-rapid change. But no. “I realized, very strongly at this moment, that Gorbachev was a socialist to his core. He outlined for me how socialism could find its way again, by going back to the time before Stalin. I felt completely the opposite and said so. When I told him we were considering elections, and not merely talking to the opposition, he was especially angered.” It was a blow against socialism, Gorbachev argued heatedly, a violation of the party’s right to create a just society. You couldn’t just leave that to chance, for the people to decide.
    Nemeth remembers feeling physically sick. He feared that all he had been working toward was about to crumble. How could he possibly go ahead without Gorbachev’s blessing? Images of Soviet troops in Budapest flickered through his head. At the very least, Moscow’s resistance to his policies would mean the end of his own career. For a fleeting moment, Nemeth wondered whether he might even be thrown in jail. Then, abruptly, Gorbachev changed his tone. “But of course, comrade,” he said, “you are responsible, not me.” Hungary’s direction was for Hungarians to decide, not Moscow.
    Suddenly, the immense pressure lifted. Nemeth pressed the point, posing again the elemental question. “I asked him specifically, ‘If we set a date for an election and are voted out, would you intervene as in 1956?’ ” Without a hint of hesitation, Gorbachev answered,
“Nyet.”
Then he paused and, with a ghost of a smile, added a telling caveat: “At least, not as long as I am sitting in this chair.”
    This
no
was of immense importance to Nemeth. “It meant wecould go ahead. It