THE IRON CURTAIN IS A MEMORY, but the Communist debris has not been swept away in the former Eastern bloc. In Hungary, for example, the main journalists' association is still dominated by leftist former apparatchiks. And the United States is providing it significant infusions of cash.
In late 1989, the American embassy in Budapest was looking for some additional space. It decided to lease the education facility of the Hungarian Journalists' Association (known by its Hungarian acronym MUOSZ). It seemed a pleasant idea: Where Marxist-Leninist indoctrination once took place, an American library would bloom. But there was this unfortunate fact: the rent would amount to approximately $ 225,000 a year, five times the market rate; and the money would contribute to the coffers of a notorious KGB front.
MUOSZ has a long and scandalous record. It was, and is, a key player in the International Organization of Journalists (IOJ), the worldwide league of Communist news workers. The Soviet bear may be dead, or hibernating, but much of communism's global infrastructure remains. The IOJ controls journalistic accreditation in several former Soviet republics and maintains training centers in three Communist lingerers: Cuba, North Korea, and Yemen.
In the lease negotiations, MUOSZ was represented by the Hungarian government's Offce for the Support of the Diplomatic Corps, a KGB affiliate responsible for bugging embassies, placing diplomats in controlled apartments, and so on. The American embassy sent a minor-league bureaucrat.
Something else is rotten about the arrangement: MUOSZ head-quarters was a gift to the association from the Nazis, who had expropriated the mansion from a Jewish family. The adjacent marble-and-limestone villa, which the Americans now occupy, was given to MUOSZ by the Communists. One wonders whether the title is any good.
In the afterglow of Hungary's "bloodless revolution," the 5,000-member MUOSZ made a few symbolic gestures of contrition, all of them meaningless. It submitted an offcial resignation from the IOJ. Middle-level functionaries replaced big Communist names on the offcer roster. But the IOJ still has a business offce in Budapest and holds seminars and conferences at MUOSZ-owned resorts. The MUOSZ secretary-general, elected in 1989 on a "reform ticket," represented Hungary at an IOJ Congress in Zimbabwe, two years after Vaclav Havel expelled the IOJ from Czechoslovakia for its continuing KGB ties.
MUOSZ also readmitted as honorary members approximately 100 journalists who had been kicked out for supporting the anti-Communist revolt in 1956. But this meant little to men and women who had been deprived of their chosen profession for decades.
About its political alliances, MUOSZ is unabashed. After the 1990 elections, it became an unoffcial public-relations agency for the opponents of Hungary's first freely elected government. The association's president is the former editor of the offcial organ of the Communist party. Explains Peter Nadori, former editor of Magyar Narancs, a liberal weekly, "Hacks from the old order run MUOSZ. Jobs are scarce. They take care of their own." Ex- premier Jozsef Antall refused to grant interviews to MUOSZ reporters, remarking in 1992, "They're just a bunch of Mickey Mouses" -- a statement widely quoted in Europe.
Also in 1992, Arpad Goncz, the conservative president, charged MUOSZ with complicity in a scheme to tie him to neo-Nazis. A TV camera crew -- all MUOSZ4tes -- filmed an important presidential address. In the audience were a small number of neo-Nazi hecklers. The state-owned TV station did not link Goncz to the neo-Nazis. But the out-takes repackaged for home video, and for use at political meetings, pictured Goncz with swastikas looming in the background, implicitly connecting the president to skin-heads.
Since communism's fall, Hungary has had only one newspaper strike. It was political, not economic. The alleged reason for striking Magyar Nemzet, the country's leading conservative newspaper, was that the publication refused to join the publishers' association. But many newspapers do not belong to the association. The real reason was that the newspaper was owned by Robert Hersant, publisher of Le Figaro in Paris and one of Europe's most visible conservatives.
Defending the strike, a press union official declared, "Fascist-type conservatives like Hersant have no place in Hungary. I'm glad we helped drive him out." (Hersant sold the newspaper back to the state in 1994.)
A new generation is moving to the top in Hungary's newsrooms. Most were not schooled in Marxist-Leninist communications theory. There is now a rival organization to MUOSZ, the more democratic Community of Hungarian Journalists (MUK), which has 750 to 1,000 dues-paying members. But MUK has a hard time competing with MUOSZ. The older organization boasts many advantages: vast real estate assets, a large government subsidy, muscle in hiring, and Uncle Sam's rent. MUOSZ attracts more young applicants than does MUK. College graduates seeking entry-level positions in the media naturally gravitate toward the association that has the jobs and the perks. Moreover, MUOSZ is enjoying a bit of a renaissance now that the government has been taken over by former Communists. The subsidy has been increased and is slightly larger than the American rent payments.
Those payments are scheduled to cease later this year. The change could not come soon enough. For over six years, the American government has carried out an agreement that has enriched an organization whose work against democratic freedoms is infamous.
Herman J. Obermayer, a former daily newspaper editor and publisher and a longtime member of the Commentary publication committee, has conducted several publishing seminars in Hungary.