Miklós Vásárhelyi

Miklós Vásárhelyi, journalist and politician: born Fiume, Austria-Hungary 9 October 1917; married 1949 Edit Pór (one son, two daughters); died Budapest 31 July 2001.

Miklós Vásárhelyi was one of the great men of the Hungarian liberal intellectual left, and held considerable influence until recently as the person in charge of dishing out millions of dollars on behalf of George Soros and his Open Society Fund in Hungary.

His friends liked him for his wit, his guts and his Italianate cultural leanings. He was born in 1917, in Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia). This Adriatic port, until Yugoslavianised, retained a lively Italian atmosphere. The older Vásárhelyis settled there when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and made a point of sending their son to an Italian school. Miklos Vásárhelyi later spent the year 1936-37 at Rome University.

His enemies, however, could never forgive him for writing nasty articles in the Communist Party's daily paper Szabad Nép during the years 1945-49. His Communist zeal made him just as blinkered as any of the less intelligent party hacks.

After Rome, from 1937 to 1942 Vásárhelyi studied law in Hungary, at Debrecen University and while a student there he got in touch with the local group of the banned Communist Party. With the advance of Nazism taking Hungary into its stride new, even harsher anti-Jewish regulations were introduced, and as a Jew, Vásárhelyi was taken to forced labour service in 1942. Eventually he drifted back to Budapest and became a member of an armed group, fighting against the German army and its collaborators.

He was something of a resistance hero when in 1945 he joined the Communist newspaper Szabadsag, which later merged with Szabad Nep. The first influence eroding his faith in Soviet-type Communism came with Orwell. A friend secretly lent him 1984 and the old ideals started to weaken. Simultaneously the Party began to lose its trust in him. The paper released him and he was pushed sideways, first to Hungarian Radio and, from 1952 to 1954, to the propaganda magazine Hungary, published in English and Russian. There Vásárhelyi made friends with the Russian language editor, Imre Nagy's daughter, Erzsébet.

After Stalin's death in 1953, reform ideas began to spread within the Hungarian Communist Party and Nagy became leader of the government. Vásárhelyi was appointed press chief of the prime minister's office. Soon Moscow decided that Imre Nagy had gone too far and got rid of him. Vásárhelyi not only lost his job, but was expelled from the Party. But dissatisfaction gathered strength by the mid-Fifties and Nagy's group met every week in his villa to discuss how to get back to power.

On 23 October 1956, revolution broke out in Budapest. Vásárhelyi was reinstated as government press officer. When the revolt collapsed with the Soviet invasion he sought asylum at the home of the Yugoslav assistant military attaché, while Imre Nagy, with more than 40 people, including members of their families, escaped to the Yugoslav embassy. János Kádár, newly installed as leader, promised safe passage and sent a bus to take them home. Ominously the bus collected Vásárhelyi as well, although he lived only yards from the attaché's house. They were all deported to Romania. In 1957 the trials begun. Nagy was sentenced and hanged, Vásárhelyi got five years in prison. He was released in 1960 with the general amnesty. For the next 12 years he worked as a freelance translator and office clerk.

With the softening of the Kadar dictatorship Vásárhelyi became a script editor at the state film studios, but in 1979 he was in trouble again for signing a petition demanding fair treatment for the members of the Czechoslovakian Charta movement.

In 1983-84, with the help of friends in the West, Vásárhelyi spent a year at Columbia University, New York, as a guest professor of media history. In 1988, when the old regime collapsed in Hungary, Vásárhelyi became a founding member of the liberal Free Democrats' Association. Once again, he became an influential member of society and George Soros decided he was just the right man to be his representative in Hungary. Between 1990 and 1994 the Free Democrats secured Vásárhelyi a place in Parliament, on their Budapest list.

Stocky and good-looking, clever and humorous, Miklos Vásárhelyi was a very active man until developing serious heart trouble. The decline of the Free Democrats made him edgy and uncomfortable when it came to political discussions. His younger daughter, Maria, a media expert and publicist, is still an ardent fighter for the cause.

Miklos Vásárhelyi was made a knight of the Italian Republic in 1996 and decorated with the French Légion d'Honneur in 1997 and the Pro Renovanda Cultura Hungarica Medal in 1998. He is the author of a none too complimentary book, A lord és a korona ("The Lord and the Crown", 1974), on the first Lord Rothermere, who was considered by some for the vacant Hungarian throne after the Daily Mail's "Justice for Hungary" campaign after the First World War. He also wrote the political study La rivoluzione ungherese e la sinistra europea ("The Hungarian Revolution and the European Left", 1987).

Mátyás Sárközi