The Apologetics
of the Accused: Fascism, Communism and the Catholic Church of Hungary,
1945-1949
Christopher P. Adam, MA Thesis (Carleton University - 2005).
Abstract and Introduction
(A printed and bound copy of the
entire thesis has been deposited at the Carleton University Library as
well as at the National Library of Canada.)
Abstract
This essay examines the conflict between the Catholic Church of Hungary
and the Hungarian Communist Party, from 1945 to 1949. The immediate
postwar period represented a cultural struggle between a conservative
Catholic Church and the nascent Communist Party. Both institutions
competed for power in the reconstructed Hungary and proposed vastly
different and mutually exclusive visions for the future of the country.
The conflict began as a debate in the Church and Party press over the
World War II past and the Church’s alleged collusion with fascist and
authoritarian elements of the interwar regime. These rhetorical attacks
were also accompanied by force, as Communist leaders saw the Catholic
Church and its affiliated youth and educational institutions as the
fledgling Party’s greatest rivals and obstacles to power in the postwar
period.
Introduction
The end of each world war brought with it a radical reorganization of
society, with institutions seen as responsible for the conflict held to
account and their authority and position in society called into
question. With the end of World War II, Europe faced a
significant turning point, although unlike in the First World War, the
stunning collapse of a new brand of twentieth century dictatorships,
Fascism and National Socialism, rather than the demise of teetering
monarchies, proved to be the order of the day. The end of the war in
Hungary, however, represented not only the end of German occupation and
the short-lived rule of the Hungarian Nazis, but also the total
collapse of the interwar regime, an order frozen in an aristocratic,
Christian-conservative worldview. In addition to the regime,
institutions perceived to have been associated with the old order found
themselves discredited and tainted by the legacy of Nazism after the
end of the war. In 1945 the Catholic Church of Hungary, which had
served as an ideological pillar of the old regime and had enjoyed
significant privileges during this period, remained the most explicit
reminder of Christian-Conservative interwar Hungary.
Hungary’s Communists, arising from hiding and returning from exile,
proved most critical of the Church’s role in the old regime and its
activities during Ferenc Szálasi’s Arrow Cross, Nazi-style rule
in 1944-45. Victims of the old order and victors of the new, Hungarian
Communist politicians returned from the Soviet Union behind the Red
Army and prepared to resurrect their once-banned organizations and
newspapers. They had reason to castigate an organization whose high
clergy stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the landed aristocracy,
industrialists and the military and who appeared all too willing to
associate with the anti-Bolshevist radical, fascist right. The
Communists held the Roman Catholic Church—in contrast to Protestant and
Orthodox communities—in particular disdain, due to the Vatican’s
historic opposition to Communism and the national Church’s connection
to a foreign, supra-national authority. Consequently, a policy of
limiting the national Church’s communication with the Holy See, in part
by removing the Church’s highest ecclesiastic leaders, developed into
the preferred form of action on the part of Communist governments
throughout Eastern Europe.(1) In Hungary, the Communist Party engaged
first in a nation-wide press campaign to discredit the Church,
following which they used force to dissolve the Church’s network of
schools and youth organizations; only after accomplishing this did they
remove members of the High Clergy.
Early postwar Hungary proved to be a battleground not only of
ideologies, but of interpretations of the past and how the two
together would shape the future of the country. This struggle for
Hungarian society and culture, informed by conflicting interpretations
of the recent past, characterized the period between 1945 and 1949.
This period became a cultural struggle between the Church and the
Communist Party, both of which vied for power in postwar Hungary. The
Catholic press found itself at the centre of this conflict. At first,
accusations in the Communist press forced the Church to re-examine and
offer an apologia for its relationship with the autocratic interwar
regime. It was only partly able to fend off these attacks, as a small
number of priests found guilty of collaborating with the Nazis provided
further ammunition for the Communist press. These accusations made the
Church vulnerable to further claims that Catholic
institutions—including schools and youth associations—conspired to
overthrow the state and replace postwar democracy with fascist rule.
Once the Communist-controlled political police dissolved Church youth
associations and completed its arrests and investigations in Catholic
schools, it still faced a religious institution with a loyal base of
support and with considerable sway throughout rural Hungary. The
Church’s leadership now faced persecution.
Although the Communist press did not attack the Catholic faith itself,
the party’s effort to bury the notion of political Catholicism and
ensure that the Church would never again wield such powers as it did
during the interwar regime meant that the Church’s understanding of
itself and its place in society would have to undergo a radical
reorganization. The conservative ecclesia as well as the more
‘progressive’ elements of the Church realized that an end to the
Church’s influence in the circles of government and in society would
leave it as little more than a network of faith-based communities and
prayer groups, removed from the stream of public discourse and devoid
of any real influence in society. Catholicism in Hungary had been about
more than merely the tenets of the Catholic faith and an adherence to a
set of religious beliefs—it encompassed a specific understanding of
society, the Church’s role in that society and close Church and State
cooperation, especially in the field of education.
Historical works on postwar Hungary and the gradual establishment of
Communist hegemony tend to focus almost exclusively on party politics.
This is the major weakness of the few English-language works on this
period by western historians. Two such historians are Hugh Seton-Watson
and C.A. Macartney. In both cases, the Communist conflict with the
Church is either relegated to the sidelines of the historical narrative
and replaced with an exclusive focus on party politics, or else only
afforded importance in light of Cardinal Mindszenty’s arrest.
Macartney’s work is an example of the latter. While Macartney is
correct in arguing that “after the fall of the parties, the chief
surviving ideological opposition to Communism had been in the
churches,” he is mistaken in asserting that the conflict between the
Church and the Communist Party only began in 1948. (2) The period
between 1945 and 1948 saw the greatest tensions between the Church and
the Communist authorities, especially during the 1946 investigations
against confessional schools and the dissolution of the Catholic youth
movement. Seton-Watson affords even less importance to the Church. He
argues that “by terror, threats, bribery or intrigue, the Communists
divided or destroyed first the peasant parties and then the social
democratic parties.”(3) The postwar conflict, according to
Seton-Watson, occurred almost exclusively at the level of high politics
and the Communist parties of Eastern Europe enjoyed the upper hand in a
struggle whose outcome had been largely predetermined by the presence
of the Red Army.
An examination of the Communist conflict with the Hungarian Catholic
Church demonstrates that Hungary’s Communists felt vulnerable and weak
for much of the early postwar period and it is precisely this “threat
perception” that motivated their campaign against the Church. An
exclusive focus on party politics in the case of Hungary downplays the
role of the Church as the only institution of continuity with the past
and a source of consistent opposition to the Communists, during the
interwar regime and throughout the early postwar years. The conflict
between the Church and the Communist Party resonated throughout
society, permeating the press, parishes, community organizations,
schools and colleges.
When the Church’s conflict with the Communist Party is addressed, such
as in Macartney’s work, most attention is paid to József
Cardinal Mindszenty’s arrest and subsequent trial in 1948-49. Yet the
most important Church-State conflicts occurred in the years prior,
during the debate over the World War II past, the investigations
against Catholic youth movements and educational institutions and the
nationalization of confessional schools. This essay examines a facet of
Hungary’s postwar development often relegated to the sidelines of
history texts. Without the dissolution of the Catholic youth
movement—which boasted a membership of over half a million—and without
the radical restructuring of a public education system heavily under
Church influence, the Hungarian Communist Party would have been unable
to establish its political hegemony. Therefore, an examination of
Church-State relations is necessary in understanding Hungary’s postwar
development.
Similarly to Seton-Watson, Bennett Kovrig also examines postwar Hungary
through the lense of party politics. Kovrig argues that Hungary’s
transformation from multi-party rule to Communist hegemony followed a
more cautious and gradual pattern, as per the directives of both the
Soviet and Hungarian Communist leadership.(4) Kovrig’s analysis is a
traditional piece of political history focusing primarily on the
relationship between the non-Marxist parties and the nascent Hungarian
Communist Party. Kovrig treats Church-State relations only in passing
and focuses on the gradual solidification of Communist hegemony within
the sphere of party politics. When he does address the regime’s
conflict with the Church, only the period following Cardinal
Mindszenty’s 1948 arrest is covered.(5) By focusing exclusively on the
high politics of the period, Kovrig fails to examine some of the most
important developments that led up to Communist hegemony—namely, the
dissolution of Catholic youth organizations, the debate over the
nationalization of confessional schools and the media campaign aimed at
discrediting the Church leadership over its World War II past.
The ultimate pacification of the Catholic hierarchy and the
dismemberment of influential institutions affiliated with the Church by
Communist politicians proved a gradual process highlighted by often
impassioned dialogue that took place between the Communists and the
Church leadership on the country’s interwar past. I will argue that
this dialogue manifested itself in four forms. Firstly, the Communists
portrayed the entire interwar regime as the natural precursor to, and
foundation of, Hungarian fascism. In this sense, the Communist press
saw Admiral Miklós Horthy as the “father” of both fascism and
Nazism. The Church quickly realized the implications of this summary
condemnation of an entire regime, under which they had enjoyed such
privileges, and thus differentiated between the Horthy regime and
National Socialism, asserting that at least part of the interwar past
was salvageable and could be used as a basis upon which to build
postwar Hungary.
While the first aspect of the debate was primarily historical in
nature—focusing on the overall legacy of the previous regime—the second
aimed at pointing to specific instances of wartime collaboration among
the clergy. Accusations of collusion with the more radical right wing
of the Horthy regime and in some cases, even with Szálasi’s Nazi
government discredited and compromised the Catholic leadership. This
alleged collaboration took different forms. Most importantly, a handful
of widely publicized and highly scandalous cases detailed how members
of the clergy and Catholic youth had allegedly collaborated with the
Nazis during the War. By early 1946, when all those convicted of war
crimes had been sentenced and executed, left wing newspapers and
Communist politicians turned to uncovering alleged fascist plots and
conspiracies in postwar Hungary. In each case, the Communist press made
a direct link between the given conspiracy and the Church.
The Catholic response to these accusations of collaboration also
assumed several forms. The Church asserted that the handful of World
War II collaborators were exceptions to the rule and were thus not
representative of the Church as a whole. The Catholic Church also
argued that it too had fallen victim to the anti-Christian and “pagan”
excesses of National Socialism. The cases of conspiracy and alleged
fascist activity after the War, however, proved more troubling.
Nonetheless, rarely did the Church speak to the anti-Catholic nature of
Nazism in Hungary under the Arrow Cross. Rather, it turned the
attention to the way in which Hitler’s Germany discriminated against
the Church and German Catholics, and how the German model of national
socialism was “pagan” in nature and thus diametrically opposed to
Christendom. The religious leadership, perhaps out of fear, proved most
circumspect in criticising the decisions and investigations of the
political police (PRO) and the Communist-administered interior ministry.
The third facet of the debate was based on two competing visions of the
future, founded firmly on the Church’s and the Communist Party’s
respective understanding of the past. Toward the second half of
1946, the Communists had more or less exhausted the issue of
alleged collaborators and fascists within the Church, with most of
these individuals having already been sentenced. The investigations
regarding underground fascist cells and conspiracies resulted in the
disbanding of Catholic youth organizations. As a consequence of this
new situation, the debate between the Church and the Communists also
began to change, both in its substance as well as in the rhetoric
employed by the Communists. “Fascists” were now largely replaced by
“forces of clerical reaction,” which happened to be bent on restoring
the ancien regime and undermining the foundations of democracy.
The fourth stage in the debate between the Church and the Communists
represented the most significant shift in the structure of the
discourse. The Communist Party made clear that rooting out
“reactionary” elements within the Church meant not only disbanding
various Catholic associations, but targeting the highest offices of
Church leadership. In this final stage, which began in 1948 and ended
with Mindszenty’s arrest on December 26, 1948, the Communist Party no
longer sought to continue any type of dialogue with the Church through
the mass media, but rather focused on convincing the population that
they had a mandate and could justify their decision to remove the head
of the Hungarian Catholic Church. The Communist Party’s attempts at
legitimization signaled that despite their control of most government
ministries and the police force, they were still concerned of
potentially earning the wrath of a sizeable rural Catholic population.
Despite rhetoric on both sides claiming that they wished to resolve the
debate and avoid a larger cultural struggle, the two sides advocated
such different visions for the future of Hungary, based on widely
varying interpretations of the interwar past, that a compromise seemed
unlikely. They also generally maintained that the two visions were
mutually exclusive and utterly irreconcilable. The systematic
disbanding of religious organizations, the secularization of church
schools and a general separation between Church and State served as a
death knell to a religious leadership accustomed to a certain degree of
political preponderance and significant influence on national culture.
Yet the unwillingness on the part of bishops to relinquish the Church’s
role in public life, and its powerful position in society, was seen as
a threat to a still fledgling Communist Party bent on making gains in
rural Hungary and, indeed, among Catholic voters.
By 1948-49, the debate between the Church and the Party had gravitated
noticeably toward a discourse on the future of Hungary, but always in
relation to the past. The pinnacle of the Communist attack against the
Church proved to be the arrest of the outspoken, anti-Communist and
deeply conservative Cardinal Mindszenty on December 25, 1948. The
way had been prepared during the preceeding two months, at which
time the Communist press was ripe with accusations of reactionary
treachery regarding the cardinal as well as reports from various civic
organizations, including certain allegedly Catholic groups, calling on
the government to bring Mindszenty to justice. When the political
police finally charged the cardinal, the accusations reflected a shift
from the innuendos of 1945-46, when the Communist press simply hinted
at Mindszenty’s alleged collusion with the radical right. During the
1949 Mindszenty trial, the charges levied against the cardinal revolved
around his apparent conspiracy to undermine the new, democratic order
as well as the illegal use of foreign currency. Rather than relying
solely on elusive references to a treacherous past, the authorities
based Mindszenty’s trial on much more concrete allegations.
In the first half of 1945 the Communists did not directly censure the
Church. Even later, Soviet-educated Communist politicians demonstrated
circumspection in excoriating Catholicism, as a conservative,
anachronistic institution, rather than condemning the Catholic faith
itself. Nevertheless, it would be inaccurate to conclude from this
evidence that the Communist intention was simply to ‘modernize,’ or
secularize Hungarian government and society, as Communist attacks
against Church institutions did not end following radical land reform
through which the Church lost most its large estates, after the
dissolution of Catholic youth organizations and even after the
nationalization of confessional schools. Merely creating a secular
state and weakening the Church’s position would still allow the clergy
to agitate against the regime on the periphery. The Communist Party’s
intention was to completely discredit the Church and to make it
dependent on the regime to such an extent that it no longer has the
resources, the ability, nor the will to oppose the regime in any way.
Jen? Gergely, perhaps the most prolific historian of the Catholic
Church in twentieth century Hungary, seems to argue that the concept of
a cultural struggle was little more than the fabrication of a
conservative ecclesia. According to Gergely, the period after 1945
“cannot be interpreted as a kulturkampf—albeit, the Constantine-style
Church, which insisted on keeping its positions of power, understood it
as this.”(6) Gergely argues that rather than being a cultural
struggle, this period merely represented the modernization and
secularization of Hungary. Nevertheless, what becomes apparent from the
anti-Catholic rhetoric is that the Communists themselves did, in fact,
see themselves as partaking in a struggle against Catholicism in
Hungary, which they criticized as being reactionary, not concurring
with the concept of the separation of the political life from the
religious, the separation of the Church and State, or the national
culture from Catholicism. The way in which the Church understood itself
and Hungarian culture and society as a whole, had been deeply shaped by
the policies of the interwar regime. Therefore by 1945, the issue of
the Church’s place in society was not solely an administrative matter,
but one deeply intertwined with the Catholic faith. Consequently, the
Communist program of demolishing the vestiges of Church’s influence in
the public domain and curtailing the Catholic hierarchy can be seen as
a type of kulturkampf in its own right. Although Communist leaders were
cautious not to alienate rural Catholic voters by directly attacking
the tenets of the Catholic faith, the promotion and expression of this
faith and its role in the affairs of the state were curtailed at every
turn, signaling a truly radical departure from the practice of the
interwar period.
While Gergely downplays the extent of the conflict between the Church
and the Communist Party during the early postwar period, Sabrina
Ramet—in an examination Church-State relations in Communist
countries—argues that “system destruction” characterized the initial
phase of establishing one-party hegemony in all Communist
societies. According to Ramet, the “revolutionary party, not yet
secure, must defend its position against internal and external foes,
and it seeks to uproot traditional culture and traditional elites as a
preliminary to constructing a new society.”(7)
In the case of East European states, “system destruction” unfolded
between 1944 and 1953. Ramet argues that the removal of religious
elites characterized this initial period in all Communist countries,
from Buddhists in China to the Catholic Church in Cuba. In Poland,
actions against the Catholic Church followed a somewhat different and
more gradual pattern than elsewhere in Eastern Europe. For example, a
significant contingent of priests organized the pro-regime PAX movement
as early as 1945, whereas in Hungary such a movement only became an
important force in the Church in 1949, after the disbanding of Church
organizations, the nationalization of confessional schools and after
Mindszenty’s arrest. As in Hungary, the Polish Catholic press lost its
independence by 1948, but as opposed to the rest of the region, the
Polish Catholic Church maintained many of its confessional schools. In
contrast to Gergely’s view that a ‘normal’ process of modernization
characterized Church-State relations after 1945, Ramet argues that
throughout the region “Church and state confronted each other as
independent actors with divergent preferences. Given the uncertainty
that surrounds the establishment of a new political order, conflict was
almost foreordained.”(8) While Ramet’s regional assessment is also
accurate in the case of Hungarian Church-State relations, Ramet offers
little analysis on the “system destruction” phase in Hungary and
focuses more on post-1949 collaboration between the Hungarian Catholic
Church and the Communist regime.
The concept of a struggle between ideologies is at the centre of both
the interwar period and the early postwar years. The struggle can be
understood as the conflict arising from the relationship of three
ideologies: the Christian-conservatism of the aristocracy, the fascism
of some middle-class intellectuals, the petty-bourgeoisie and the lower
classes, and Communist sentiments among the proletariat. The Hungarian
High Clergy identified with the conservatism of the upper classes. As
part of their postwar apologia, ecclesiastical authorities strained to
show that anti-Catholicism characterized both Nazism and Bolshevism and
that the two positioned themselves in diametric opposition to the
conservatism of the Church. The clergy employed this logic in an effort
to distance itself from the Communist allegation that the Church had
subscribed to fascist sympathies.
A number of historians have examined the relationship of these
worldviews in interwar Europe and their respective quests for hegemony.
Ernst Nolte’s Three Faces of Fascism argues that churches and other
members of the Conservative establishment consistently criticized the
National Socialist ‘variant’ of Fascism, but proved more encouraging of
the Mussolini-style Fascist rule. “A Christian confrontation of
uncompromising severity existed only toward National Socialism and this
showed itself less in theoretical works than in testimonies from the
death cell and the concentration camps. National Socialism was merely
cited as an example of the dangers threatening from secularization.”(9)
Like Bolsheviks, Nazis sought to define the state as separate,
independent and of an authority higher than the Church. As such, they
would not tolerate the high clergy, aligned with the landed
aristocracy, dictating the national culture.
While secularism was an unacceptable facet of Nazism for the Catholic
Church, Italian-style fascism proved to be a different experience.
According to Nolte, “the fact that in most European countries Churches
encouraged fascism to a sometimes very considerable degree is something
which their adversaries have repeatedly emphasized and which it is hard
to deny. Yet it would probably be fairer to speak of an early
ambivalence.” (10) Nevertheless, as S.J. Woolf points out, fascism—like
National Socialism and Bolshevism—was also a revolutionary movement
from the very beginning and as such boasted both republicanism and
anti-clericalism.(11) Fascism’s antagonism towards the Church, however,
was nowhere near as pronounced as in Hitler’s Germany. Although the
revolutionary nature of Mussolini’s movement may have disturbed
Hungarian Catholic leaders who, after the 1919 experience with radical
change, were quite content with maintaining the conservative status
quo, fascism’s fervent anti-Communism proved to be inviting.
During the interwar period, the Church in Hungary found itself in a
conundrum. Catholicism was faced with two ideologies, both of which
were revolutionary in character, and as such posed a threat to the High
Clergy’s position in society. Ultimately, the Church allied itself with
the aristocratic, conservative forces, which also happened to be
anticommunist and were willing to associate with fascist elements in
meeting their common goal, namely the eradication of Bolshevism.
According to George Barany, “the traditionalist conservative and the
liberal interpretation of fascism tend to regard both fascism, and
National Socialism, as revolutionary trends dangerously close to
Bolshevism.”(12) Yet the government still sought contact with radical
right-wing elements, in order to help it in its struggle with
Bolshevism. After 1945, Communists pointed to this unholy alliance for
which the only surviving institution and element of the interwar
regime, the Catholic Church, had to answer.
Both the Communists and the leaders of the Catholic Church found daily
and weekly newspapers to be the most effective way of promoting their
visions of postwar Hungary. Much of the conflict between the Church and
the Communist Party unfolded in the press. For the Communists, the
official party morning paper, Szabad Nép, served as their main
tool of communication with the population and the forum where criticism
of the Catholic Church and allegations against Church institutions
would first appear. For the Church, the weekly Új Ember, founded
on August 16, 1946 and published by the Hungarian branch of Actio
Catholica, had been seen as the Church’s semi-official voice and the
forum wherein Catholic leaders and the paper’s editors would respond to
Communist allegations against the Church.
The Communists appreciated the importance of the written press in the
dissemination of ideas and in their offensive against the Church.
During early 1945, the Red Army would allocate all newsprint to
newspapers published in areas under its control. Later, the Communist
Party of Hungary assumed these responsibilities and would divide
newsprint, control the limited stocks of papers available for printing
and dispense, or revoke publication licenses to new publications.(13)
Catholic leaders and writers used the press, as well as parish
newsletters, circulars and pastoral letters to communicate with their
faithful and counter Communist allegations. The media remained the
preferred forum for a Catholic defense. The Church realized that its
interwar heritage would prove a vulnerability in postwar Hungary.
Consequently, Catholic elites, including conservative politicians,
bishops, parish priests, journalists and authors, engaged in a public
debate on the pages of Hungary’s main Catholic weekly, Új Ember,
as well as in other smaller publications. This debate developed into a
full-fledged confrontation with the Communist Party on the compromised
interwar past, on the role of that past in postwar Hungary and whether
any of the values, traditions and institutions of the former
conservative regime should be permitted to form a part of the country’s
postwar, democratic future.
Endnotes
1. H.M. Waddams, “Communism and the Churches,” International Affairs,
Royal Institute of International Affairs, Vol. 24, no. 3 (July 1949):
303.
2. Carlile Aylmer Macartney, Hungary, A Short History,
(Chicago: Aldine. Pub. Co., 1962) 238-239.
3. Hugh, Seton-Watson, “Differences in the Communist Parties,” Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science, Vol. 317. The Satellites in
Eastern Europe. (May 1958), 3.
4. Bennett Kovrig, Communism
in Hungary, From Kun to Kádár, (California:
Stanford University, 1979) 151.
5. Ibid., 250-252.
6. “Ez a korszak nem interpretálható
kultúrharcként—jóllehet az addigi hatalmi
állásához ragaszkodó konstantinusi
egyház úgy értelmezte...”
Jenő Gergely, A politikai
katolicizmus Magyarországon, 1890-1950, (Political
Catholicism in Hungary, 1890-1950), (Budapest: Kossuth Kiadó,
1977) 10.
7. Sabrina P. Ramet, Nihol
Obstat: Religion, Politics and Social Change in East-Central Europe and
Russia, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998) 13.
8. Ibid., 19.
9. Ernst Nolte, Three Faces
of Fascism, (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966) 18.
10. Ibid., 18.
11. S.J. Woolf (ed.), Fascism
in Europe (London: Methuen, 1981), 46.
12. George Barany, “The Dragon’s Teeth: The Roots of Hungarian
Fascism,” in Peter F. Sugar (ed.) Native Fascism in the Successor
States, 1918-1945, (Santa Barbara, California: ABC-Clio, 1971),
75-76.
13. Stephen D. Kertesz, “The Methods of Communist Conquest:
Hungary 1944-1947,” World
Politics, Vol. 3, No. 1 (October 1950): 35-36.