In Europe

and a path of peace; the withdrawal of troops, negotiations.’ Marshal Zhukov – in his brief role as minister of defence at the time – advocated withdrawing all troops from Hungary. Central-committee member Yekaterina Furtseva said this was a lesson in military politics for the Soviet Union: ‘We must look for different kinds of relationships with the popular democracies.’
    Meanwhile, György Konrád – acting as bodyguard to a professor – trotted around town carrying a sub-machine gun. At the time he was also on the staff of a literary journal. ‘I decided to pay a visit to the director of the state publishing house, to ask him for a bigger print run for our magazine. I asked him for 30,000 copies. “Of course, make it 50,000,” he said. I didn't grasp at the time that his reaction had everything to do with my sub-machine gun hanging on the coat rack.’
    A certain degree of order was restored during the final weekend of the uprising. The man who had led the lynch mob at the party headquarters was arrested. The strike ended.
    In Moscow, however, the mood changed after Nagy's announcement that Hungary would leave the Warsaw Pact. Britain and France had invaded the Suez zone that week, and the Soviet leadership felt that it would be a mistake to tolerate too many ‘capitalist’ successes.
    György Konrád: ‘At night I heard the first shots. I turned on the radio, like everyone else. Very early the next morning I went to the university, with my sub-machine gun. There were Russian tanks in the streets. I knew that a number of students were armed as well, and I hoped we could defend the buildings together. But we never fired a shot. They didn't shoot at us, so we decided not to shoot at them.’
    On Sunday morning, 4 November, the Russians rolled into Hungary with considerable numbers of men and material. Within a day Budapest was theirs, within a week the uprising had been crushed. A new regime was installed under the leadership of party secretary János Kádár, a former associate of Nagy who had gone over to the Russians. There was, ever so briefly, a general strike, and then winter settled in.
    According to the most reliable sources, approximately 600 Soviet soldiers and 2–3,000 Hungarians were killed in the fighting; some 22,000proven or suspected rebels were sentenced to work camps or prison, and approximately 300 – including Imre Nagy – were executed.
    Konrád: ‘We were cowardly or prudent, I still don't know which it was, but we surrendered the university. The next decision was whether to stay in the country, or flee. About 200,000 Hungarians left after 1956; journalists, writers, intellectuals – it was an enormous brain drain for the country. Most of my friends left, my cousins went to America. I stayed. Then there was another decision to be made: to work with the regime or not. I didn't. I accepted a marginal existence, the only goal of which was to keep the culture alive, to expand it if possible, to save what had once existed. Which brings us to the boring story of the period after 1956.’
    The Hungarian summer of the final year of the twentieth century was slowly fading. There were no storms, no mists, in late September the days were still warm, the trees heavy with foliage. I had driven to the home of my friends in Vásárosbéc, across the endless plains south of Budapest. The road was full of Trabants and Warburgs, it looked as if half the rolling fleet of the former DDR had washed ashore in Hungary. Forty kilometres later the first horse and wagon appeared, close to Pécs there were dozens of them. A tanned, bent man struggled along the concrete gully beside the road, pushing a bicycle and two full canvas bags. Here and there roadside hookers in elfin skirts stood twisting a high heel in the dirt. Along the way I found myself at a little horse market, a stretch of grass beneath the trees beside a crossroads. Wagons and pairs were trotting about everywhere, showing their stuff, often with a few foals in tow. The horse traders all had bottles of beer and were knocking them back furiously. For sale a little further along were fish and sausages, cheap watches and hairpins. A drunken trader began beating two skinny horses in front of a customer, until they dragged the cart along with the brake still on. The wheels slid over the grass; blood trickled on the horses’ flanks.
    In the café in Vásárosbéc, Lajos (b.1949) and Red Jósef (b.1937) were talking about the way things