This is the way a world ends - Andrei Gromyko, Janos Kadar, Imre Nagy

National Review, August 4, 1989

THREE POLITICIANS were recently buried, one of them, remarkably, disinterred and re-buried: Andrei Gromyko, Janos Kadar, and Imre Nagy. With them, a ghastly and aberrant era in human history was being interred as well, though before it is all over tens of thousands of others will certainly die in the death throes of that monstrous mistake.

Andrei Gromyko was the complete Stalinist. If ever there were a New Soviet Man, Gromyko was it. Called at the age of 29 to the Foreign Ministry by Molotov in 1939, the year of the cynical Hitler-Stalin Pact, Gromyko dutifully followed every twist of the Party line. As Nikita Khrushchev said of him, "If I tell my foreign minister to sit on a block of ice and stay there for months, he will do it without backtalk."

Nothing at all fazed Gromyko, not the betrayal of agreements on Poland, not Katyn forest, not the murder of Masaryk during the take-over of Czechoslovakia, not Hungary or the lurch toward nuclear war over Cuba. He never missed a session of the UN, and his eloquent Nyets and stony visage made him the man the West loved to hate. He looked John Kennedy in the eye in the Oval Office and denied that the Soviets were building missile bases in Cuba. Kennedy, who had a stack of aerial photographs, did not bother to show them to Gromyko and smiled at his brazenness.

In recommending Gorbachev as Party leader in 1985, Gromyko used an interesting metaphor: "Comrades, this man has a nice smile, but he has iron teeth." Gorbachev proved it shortly thereafter by stripping Gromyko of office and power and putting one of his own men in his place.

We cannot know Gorbachev's subjective intentions and preferences. He may well believe, as suggested by his recent statements, in a "European family" and in his renunciation of force in "Europe." But Gorbachev has also found himself swept along in a quickening millstream of global history.

Poland and Hungary are breaking away, carefully and slowly. In 1956, Imre Nagy was the loyal Communist premier, but he got caught up in the nationalist fervor of the uprising and went over to the side of the Hungarian rebels, momentarily withdrawing Hungary from the Warsaw Pact. When Soviet tanks crushed the Hungarians, Nagy was tortured and hanged as a traitor. His successor, Janos Kadar, was supposed to be another puppet, but in his own way was a traitor too. His pre-perestroika economic policies produced a relative Hungarian prosperity known as "goulash Communism." Kadar, a Communist fundamentalist from early youth, presided over an important stage in the disintegration of Communism.

In May 1988 the aging and ailing Kadar was replaced by Karoly Grosz as general secretary. Hungary's Communists are promising contested elections and a multi-party system.

And Imre Nagy's corpse has been disinterred from its anonymous traitor's grave and re-buried with the honors due a national hero-and, it is now beginning to look, a world-historical hero. In retrospect, it was wise of the Reagan Administration to return to Budapest the Crown of St. Stephen, which we had held since 1945-an irreplaceable symbol of the Hungarian nation. Meanwhile, in Poland, experimental elections have been held which resulted in total defeat for the Communist candidates. Solidarity sits legitimized in a new Polish parliament.

Such legitimacy as Communist rule ever possessed was based upon a nineteenth-century theory of "scientific" history, rather than upon the traditional basis of "consent," active or passive, of the governed. Kings and dictators throughout history have been overthrown when the governed withdrew consent. In theory, the Party would never be overthrown.

Now that the "scientific" theory of legitimacy is a bad joke, force is all that remains. In the short run it may work, but not very well. It is up against nationalism, religion, economic reality, a communications revolution, and the desire for freedom.

Many expert Sinologists now say that in China the army "restored order" with extreme reluctance, that Deng Xiaoping, while dying, has "emperor status" like Mao's, but is the last man who will have it. Many Sinologists think that when Deng dies, the army will repudiate Tiananmen Square, purge the surviving Dengists, and run the country through the seven generals who control the seven military districts.

The Communist doctrine is dead. The Crown of St. Stephen is back in Hungary, and Jefferson and Lincoln were in Tiananman Square. Many things are coming to an end as the twentieth century begins to close its books, and Imre Nagy, tortured and hanged in 1956 was one of the first Communist bosses to know it.