"If a political journalist wishes to preserve his authority and self-esteem, he cannot conduct an interview merely in the interests of safeguarding the goodwill of the authorities, nor can he accept compromises of equivocal value," reads an excerpt from Paul Lendvai's book in Hungarian published in 1990 and titled Magyarország kívülről, avagy a túlélés művészete [Hungary: the Art of Survival].

The above quotation reflects a talent for professional fastidiousness and the moral foundation on which this Hungarian journalist, who moved to Vienna in 1957, built his career through which he became one of the most oft quoted experts on Central Europe in the German language media. And as a self-appointed bearer of the truth he still anxiously issues warnings for Hungary - only now they concern the dangers of popularism, radicalism and anti-Semitism. For example, in his recently published book in German titled Mein verspieltes Land (My Forfeited Country), he expresses his concerns about a Hungary filling the position of the revolving presidency of the European Union, in which "the reemergence of racism and jingoism are happily celebrated". He expressed a similar view in a joint interview he recently gave to Kurier, an Austrian magazine, along with Anton Pelinka, a professor at Budapest's Central European University, making ominous references to Fidesz and noting that there has already been a catch-all-party - in the thirties.     

The fairly one-sided writings of his meritorious career which have been coming for many years in timetable-like fashion have always lent credibility to his declared implacability with any form of dictatorship. Until now. 

 Heti Válasz is now publishing and quoting documents that were declassified years ago and accessible in the Hungarian National Archives which topple Lendvai from his carefully constructed pedestal. The picture that takes shape from these documents is of a journalist who goes far beyond the recordings necessary for a long article or interview. Lendvai presented himself as a voluntary informer to the Interior Ministry of the time (and hand in hand with this to the higher echelons of the party leadership) conveying his readiness to act as an informer and to report on such things as planned opposition events.    

To illustrate the seriousness of the affair it is worth recalling that a major storm is whipped up in Hungarian pubic life whenever it occasionally transpires that this or that writer or pop musician - often under duress - had informed on those around him or her to the state security of the dictatorship. However, apart from scoring points for himself, Lendvai was under no duress whatsoever. And he did not limit himself to providing information on various events, as he also reported on the tone of his planned shows on Austrian television and even made a programme on 1956 which perfectly accorded with the tastes of the dictatorship.   

Forum and counter-forum

The most conspicuous example of this attitude took place exactly 25 years ago on 25 November 1985 in Budapest at the end of the European Cultural Forum and the counter-event linked to it. The closing statement of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe held in Helsinki in 1975 recorded that the cultural policies of the European states were sometimes debated at the conference.

Hungary was the first communist state to organise the East-West Summit, which commenced in Budapest from 15 October 1985. The cultural forum was lent greater significance by the fact that the Reagan-Gorbacsov Geneva Summit was taking place at the same time. Not only the Hungarian ‘dignitaries' but the entire communist bloc attributed major importance to the six-week series of events in Budapest to which 900 people were invited (writers, scientists, film-makers, politicians). The organisers did everything in their power to make sure that no western citizens spoke out about the lack of free speech and a press presence at the "peace camp" or about the persecution of minorities (Romanian and Slovakian Hungarians, Bulgarian Turks, Jews from the Soviet Union).

 The authorities devoted every effort to monitoring and anticipating any possible trouble; thus, the reason for classifying a "highly confidential" coded telegramme as "urgent" sent to the Ministry of the Interior two weeks before 4 October becomes clear. The telegramme from the Hungarian embassy in Vienna informed the authorities that it had received the symposium programme, planned in parallel with the "official" forum of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, from Paul Lendvai.    

At the "counter cultural forum" planned with the participation of "dissidents and opposition groups" György Konrád was scheduled to have been one of the speakers. On 7 October a more detailed report arrived at the ministry signed by the ambassador, János Nagy (see document). This contained a complaint by Lendvai (who at the time was the head of the Eastern European editors-in-chief editorial board for ORF, Austrian television). Although according to his statement he had managed to dissuade his boss from sending a camera crew to the counter forum, if the event was to take place or was banned with the attendant stir, Lendvai would suffer serious consequences.

In reference to the Austrian government Lendvai reported that Vienna was trying to avoid every troublesome element "from right and left", and it was not in its interests for negative sensations to develop in Budapest. According to the Hungarian diplomat, Lendvai stated that "after his meeting with Sinowatz (the Austrian chancellor of the time - editor), he prevented the Czech opposition from having a voice on ORF in support of artistic freedom at the time of the Budapest forum, since it was not in the interests of the government to have its slowly improving Czech-Austrian relations derailed."

"Lendvai said that on the opening day of the Budapest Cultural Forum that he would hold an appraisal on Austrian TV using news footage from the Hungarians. In the commentary he would be using two sentences that were not "expected" from him here (in this case Vienna - the editor). Lendvai asked for discretion in regard to the broadcasting of the programme," reads the end of the report. An English language programme on the counter-forum can be found as an attachment with the warning: "Confidential - for your private information", which presumably does not refer to the communist apparatchiks.

According to the conference programme the eight top ranking comrades - to whom the document was to be forwarded "immediately" according to the instruction on the file - had the chance to meet the invited participants of the counter-forum - such as Susan Sontag, an American writer and film director, Timothy Garton Ash, an English historian, György Konrád, a Hungarian writer, and Magnus Enzenberger, a German poet - as well as others.

In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs the names of the board members of the organisation that came up with the idea of the counter-forum were diligently copied out by a mysterious hand from a part of the photocopy which is hard to read. The names included, among others, the president of the event, Karl Schwarzenberg, now the Czech minister of foreign affairs, and Anton Pelinka, a member of the international organisation and the chairman of the Austrian Helsinki Committee, as well as the academic with whom - as mentioned earlier - Lendvai recently expressed his worries about the present general situation in Hungary to the Kurier.   

Argus eyed

In light of all of this it is understandable why the organisers booked rooms and a conference hall in the Intercontinental for the western guests to no effect, as they could not hold their event scheduled for October 15 -18 there. The hundred or so western intellectuals, journalists and Hungarian opposition members were accommodated in private apartments. In addition to the foreign participants, Sándor Csoóri, György Krassó, Miklós Haraszti, György Konrád and Miklós Tamás Gáspár also spoke at the event.

The gathering of thinkers expressing ideas regarded as heretical to the system was not dispersed because of the anticipated unfavourable, foreign reaction but the participants were nevertheless closely observed. The interior ministry reports recording all that was said at the counter-event and distributing it to György Lázár the president of the Council of Ministers, György Aczél, the minister for culture and a member of the Political Committee, János Berecz the secretary for the Central Committee (KB) dealing with ideology and propaganda affairs, Mátyás Szűrös, the foreign secretary for the KB, and Gyula Horn, the state secretary for foreign affairs and the head of the operative group responsible for organising the cultural forum.   

Considering the content of the Lendvai report, his self-criticism in the 1977 volume entitled Feketelistákon [Blacklisted] reads from a different angle: "I regard it as the utmost personal negligence on my part that I did not properly appreciate the merits of those few courageous intellectuals who criticised the regime from within."

The cultural forum was only one of the occasions when Paul Lendvai collaborated with the Hungarian authorities. Even though in his autobiography he writes that between 1965 and 1970 he was banned from Hungary, and in 2006 he published an article in Élet és Irodalom [Life and Literature] about the Hungarian journalists who informed on him, based on Ministry of Foreign Affairs documents, he still willingly cooperated with the regime in the 1980s in order to be given the opportunity to make interviews and film in Hungary.

For example, an entry dated 18 November 1981 in the press department files of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reads: One of [Lendvai's] last major contributions was the documentary commemorating the 25^th anniversary of the counter revolution, compiled and partly shot in Hungary (ORF television, 30 October). The film adopted the usual western approach and Lendvai kept the rules by providing information about the film's content in advance (e.g. an interview with Béla Király) [...], and in his commentary he made no extreme statements." 

"Acceptable method"

Lendvai even went as far as to reprimand one of his colleagues at ORF on the request of a top dog as the colleague's behaviour was regarded as refractory (because this person maintained ties with Hungarian opposition groups). This event transpires from the notes dated 28 July 1986 on a conversation the Viennese journalist conducted with deputy foreign minister József Bényi. According to Lendvai, some Viennese circles disapproved of the "privileged treatment of Hungarian relations", i.e. the special status attributed to the Kádár regime on Austrian television.     

Bényi's notes also reveal that Lendvai planned a live broadcast from Budapest on 4 November 1986 with the participation of true hardliners, such as Valéria Benke, a member of the central committee, and János Fekete, the vice-president of the Hungarian National Bank. "I don't want to talk to them about 1956 but rather about the thirty years that have passed since then," said Lendvai, and the deputy foreign minister was all too happy to oblige. "Austrian television's approach to the anniversary of 1956 will be one that is acceptable to us," said József Bényi at the time.

In defence of the programmes he made, Lendvai wrote the following in his autobiography of 2002: "The frequent appearance of Péter Rényi in my documentaries and in the Sunday morning discussion panel broadcast on Oststudio, a programme I anchored, is justified by two reasons: firstly, Péter Rényi had a native level command of German, and, secondly, his person, even when he fell out of favour with György Aczél, represented major assistance in the constant struggle waged against "hardheaded" officials. What was coined by some émigrés as surrendering to communism was in fact a crucially important means to "loosen up" the situation."

Given the context revealed by the newly discovered documents, it should come as no surprise that Lendvai evaluated the regular media appearances of Péter Rényi, who was the deputy editor-in-chief of the daily paper, Népszabadság [People's Freedom] in the period 1956-1988 (!) about whom even his own editorial board wrote in 2002, the year of his death, that he was a vigilant and sharp-eyed censor".

White books, grey areas

In his autobiography Paul Lendvai admits that he did his compulsory military service in the early 1950s and was in charge of canvassing and propaganda at the interior special police, but he forgot to add that this body formed part of the Hungarian State Protection Authority (ÁVH). However, Magyar Hírlap, the periodical that published an article about this in 2008, had no proof concerning Lendvai's position as an officer.

In a debate in the early 1990s regarding the above issue Lendvai quoted a decision issued by the Ministry of Defence, stating that "[Lendvai] was not an officer during the period of his service". Furthermore, Lendvai was interned in 1953, when the authorities wanted to make him the victim of a staged trial because of his social democrat background, but, to his great fortune, Imre Nagy became prime minister in the same year and Lendvai was released. 

Despite this, Lendvai remained faithful to the communist regime. He adamantly attacked the capitalists and Yugoslavia as an author (his booklet Tito, the Enemy of the Hungarian Nation was published in 1951) and as a journalist of the Szabad Nép [Free Nation] and later as the foreign affairs columnist of MTI, the Hungarian News Agency, although after his release he renewed his party membership and returned to the vitriolic tone he had previously applied in his criticism of the west. In 1955 his work titled France at the Crossroads had a circulation of fifty thousand volumes. According to this book, addressed to all fighters for peace, Parisian workers were starving and the Americans were destroying valuable fertile land just to make room for their military air bases.   

At the time of the struggle for freedom in 1956 Lendvai was not a revolutionary, which he himself confirmed in his book intended for the German public written on the 50^th anniversary of the revolution. What is more, as he himself described it, "out of cowardice and opportunism" he participated in the preparatory stage of publishing the so-called White Books, aimed at the presentation of "the horrors of the counter revolution"; his contribution was to compile a short selection of relevant documents.

Lendvai provides an unusual explanation for his sudden "readmittance" into Hungary in his autobiography and in the article published in Life and Literature in 2006, in which he named the agents who informed on him (journalists György Szepesi and András Heltai). He writes that in 1962, some years after his emigration, he managed to arrange his mother's emigration with the help of Gyula Ortutay, as well as his first professional trip to Hungary as a reporter in 1964. In this spicy story he claimed that he had taken Ortutay, a highly revered ethnographer (also known as a member of the presidium), to a striptease bar on both the occasions he paid an official visit to Vienna, and in return, Ortutay intervened on his behalf.      

This story seems rather strange, primarily because a diary written by Gyula Ortutay, recently published posthumously, contains accounts of a sexual nature as well as details of the author's trips abroad, but makes no mention of the visits cited by Lendvai. It is also dubious since in the days of the Kádár Era it was highly unlikely for a recently emigrated journalist who was regarded as an enemy of the system to be generously welcomed back and for his relative to be allowed out of the country without the permission of the authorities.