Intellectuals here are so influenced by politics that many of them take on public roles. But so infused are they with political rage that they are unaware of having done so. They deny even the slightest hint of bias. So, even as they campaign for one or the other political camp, and do all in their power to attack the other side, they declare with a clear conscience that nothing interests them other than the truth.
Their views on Arthur Koestler, the great writer who confronted those who distorted Utopian ideals beyond all recognition, are no exception. So we can state that Koestler, who in 1942 was the first to describe the gassing of the Polish Jews, is very much a live issue for us.
On 25 October 2005, on the 100th anniversary of his birthday, the House of Terror Museum and the 20th Century Institute jointly organised a conference on "Arthur Koestler - Witness to Dictatorships." The poster advertising the event depicted Koestler between pictures of a Communist and a Nazi parade and quoted Koestler's claim that the two great totalitarian dictatorships of the 20th century, Nazism and Communism, were of the same nature. But the Ministry of Culture, in Socialist hands, did not agree with this "message," and did not support the event. So, Maria Schmidt's Koestler Year and the exhibition which was to be its centrepiece, never took place.
Another international conference was held at the Museum at the same time. Attendees included Ferenc Fejto, Peter Kende, Eva Gabor, Gyorgy Litvan, Gaspar Miklos Tamas, Matyas Sarkozi and Tamas Ungvari.
But the Hungarian Left is also reluctant to abandon the author of Darkness at Noon. The Left's view of Koestler is summed up in two books: Koestler, the Revolutionary, by Laszlo Marton, and Mihaly Szivos's Arthur Koestler - Studies and Essays. The first book, a biographical work, has a foreward by the Socialist MP Ivan Vitanyi, describing Koestler as "our brother, who embodies Hungary's 20th century." Vitanyi writes: "Didn't we do the same ourselves, a few decades later, admittedly, and less successfully, but in much the same way?" Or: Koestler, who fought against Stalinism, was a forerunner of the "new Left" that is emerging from Social Democracy.
Both books examine in detail Koestler's Zionist, Communist and anti-Communist periods. They look not just at Darkness at Noon, but also at his role in founding the CIA-funded Congress for the Freedom of Culture, a worldwide organisation of intellectuals.
The sixth point in the Congress's Berlin Declaration, is particularly interesting. Koestler, who wrote that paragraph, stated: "Neither political philosophy, nor economic theory have the exclusive right to represent abstract freedom. We believe such theories must be judged according to their practical effect on individuals' freedom. We further believe, that neither race, nor nation, nor class nor religion have the exclusive right to represent abstract freedom, nor to deny other faiths or groups their freedom in the name of some ultimate ideal or higher end. We believe that any society's contribution to the progress of humanity can be measured by the degree and quality of freedom enjoyed by its members."
In his works, Koestler gives a first-hand account of how a German member of the "Lenin guard," Willy Munzenberg, used a combination of political organisation and clever business practices to win over thousands of intellectuals to the cause of Stalin's Soviet Union, where millions were already being deported and executed in utmost secrecy. Willy expertly used the Spanish Civil War to recruit the world's progressive intellectuals to the Soviet cause. It was he that send Koestler to conduct in interview in Seville, which Franco had besieged. This adventure changed Koestler's life. In 1938, Munzenberg turned against Stalin and launched Future, a left-wing journal free of Soviet influence. Koestler became the deputy editor. Among Munzenberg's plans featured an anti-Stalinist and anti-Fascist people's front, and the foundation of a French political party with the same goals. But in June 1940, after France's military collapse, Munzenberg was killed by unkown parties, presumably people from the GPU, the Soviet secret service.
The idea of a people's front lived on in Communist propaganda for decades after 1945, but Koestler, at the beginning of the Cold War, used those same principles to set up the Congress for the Freedom of Culture.
Koestler lost some of his political steel in the 1970s. He bought a house in Austria and held scholarly conferences. These were about philosophical and scientific themes. He was pursuing new interests, opposing the death penalty and promoting euthanasia and parapsychology. He became increasingly ill, developing Parkinson's disease and leuchaemia, and in 1983 he chose to end his life along with his wife Cynthia. He left a large sum in his will towards the establishment of a university department of parapsychology, which eventually found a home at Edinburgh University.
He had encyclopedic knowledge, a provocative spirit and genius, and he was a great writer - a worthy companion of the "Martians," those Jewish scientists born in Budapest in the first decades of the century who achieved such great things in the world of science. He was a great figure, who continues to divide Hungarian intellectuals two decades after his death.
János Pelle
