By Force of Thought. Irregular Memoirs of an Intellectual Journey.Extracts
By Force of Thought. Irregular Memoirs of an Intellectual Journey.Extracts

Summary/Abstract: Late in the summer of 1954, I was staying in a resort facility at Lake Balaton when I met Sándor Haraszti, who had just been released after several years in prison. He had been a Communist back in Horthy’s time; and after 1945, he had become editor in chief of the Communist newspaper, Szabadság (Freedom). We would sometimes meet, and I had respectful feelings of friendship for him. He was the father-in-law of Géza Losonczy, who was to die tragically as a martyr of the 1956 Revolution. Losonczy had been one of the heads of the Party daily Szabad Nép when I started on the paper. Our acquaintance was superficial, but he was generally known as an old and respected Party member. Haraszti had been arrested in 1950 and Losonczy in 1951. It emerged later that Rákosi and his associates had wanted to include them in a public trial in which János Kádár would have been the main figure accused. That second public trial after Rajk’s never took place, but the men were kept in prison until released by the advent of the New Course.[...]

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