Hungary’s Gyula Horn: Sometimes Bad Guys Do Good

Doug Bandow Most of Cato’s interns weren’t even born when the Berlin Wall existed.  Those of us who are a bit older remember the Evil Empire, including an East German state which shot down citizens seeking to escape communism’s not-so-loving embrace. Many people contributed to the end of communism.  One was Hungarian Gyula Horn.  He began his career in Janos Kadar’s Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, which took power atop the Soviet tanks which suppressed the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Horn was promoted over the years, but the once obedient apparatchik changed as Hungary changed.  In 1988 a restless communist party dumped Kadar.  The following June Imre Nagy, the great Hungarian patriot who led the fight for freedom against Moscow in 1956, was reburied.  The event split Hungary’s communist party as some officials attacked their predecessors as well as the Soviet Union.  Soon plans were made for multi-party elections.  The communist party dissolved.  And this time the Red Army stayed in its barracks. Particularly important was Budapest’s decision to tear down the Iron Curtain.  Reformers relaxed restrictions on travel by Hungarians the year before.  Then the communist government decided to tear down Hungary’s border fences.  As I wrote in my latest article in American Spectator online: In February Foreign Minister Horn traveled to Moscow to inform [Mikhail] Gorbachev of Budapest’s plans. &n...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Source Type: blogs