The Bridge at Andau by James A. Michener & Steve Berry

Author:James A. Michener & Steve Berry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2014-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

7

THE MAN FROM CSEPEL

A few months before the Budapest revolution, the communist government of Hungary published an official guide to the country, composed by devoted communists and fine-tooth-combed by a board of strict AVO censors, whose job it was to see that it contained only material hewing to the party line. In view of what was shortly to take place, the passage on Budapest’s industrial section of Csepel was ironic.

“Csepel,” wrote this apologist in early 1956, “is the largest of all these industrial areas….The Rakosi Metal Works of Csepel includes eighteen factories and one hundred and fifty shops. The radial drills, vertical boring and turning mills made here are exported to many countries of the world, as are Csepel motorcycles, bicycles, sewing machines, kitchen utensils and pumps. In Csepel are also an oil refinery, a leather works, a felt mill and a paper mill. Along with this industrial development has gone the building of department stores, a hospital and clinics, and a splendid sports hall. A statue of a worker reading in the park of the housing estate is a symbol of the new Csepel—a result of the long struggle of the workers of ‘Red Csepel,’ who, in 1919, were the first to join up in the workers’ battalions to defend the Republic of Councils. The Csepel workers remained faithful to their traditions also later on; by resisting the evacuation order of the Nazis in 1944, they saved the important factories and their equipment.”

If, when erecting their statue of the happy communist worker reading his Karl Marx in the cool of the evening, the Russian leaders of Hungarian communism had wanted an ideal subject to pose for the statue, they could have selected no one better fitted than Gyorgy Szabo. At thirty-five he was an unusually handsome skilled worker in the Rakosi Bicycle Works. He was about five feet ten, a lean, rugged, gray-eyed, dark-haired workman with deep lines in his face showing a resolute character and a dimple in his chin showing a love for the good life. He had a sturdy wife and three healthy children. Szabo describes himself more simply. “I was,” he admits, “the classical type of communist worker. I even looked like one.”

From the age of seventeen, Gyorgy had worked in Csepel, as had his father before him, and his mother. Since he was a son of proletarians, he was not only attracted to the secret communist party of the 1940s; he was also the kind of workman the reds were seeking. Accordingly, he began to listen to the subtle invitations he and young men like him were beginning to receive.

“It sounded good to me when they said, ‘When we take over, you won’t work like a slave.’ Our life in Csepel in those days was very hard and we liked their next promise: ‘When we run this factory, you won’t work for a man in a big automobile. It’ll be the workers who own the automobiles…and the factory too.’ ”

Szabo was also intrigued by the

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