In a diplomatic career that sent me through all Europe, none equaled Budapest for the intrigue of its history, the mystery of its politics, the faded but still visible loveliness of its facade, but above all, the charm and the genius of its people. While the previous articles embrace the Budapest of today, my experience is of thirty years ago, the late 1960's, when Hungary was one of a number of client states of the Soviet Union—in other words, at the height of the Cold War.
I was assigned to the American Embassy as Press and Cultural Officer, one of whose functions was to contact, analyze and report to Washington the attitudes, opinions and state of mind of journalists and intellectuals who were, as was often the case in communist societies, excellent sources of information on matters far exceeding their professional concerns.
Unlike today, when contacting anyone in Hungary is accomplished by an open telephone call and leisurely visit to their homes, in the sixties, when all home and Embassy phones were bugged, the appointment had to be made secretly, either from an outside phone booth, during a chance personal meeting, or through a third party, which had the further hazard of trusting someone who might be a police agent. Once time and place was set, I had to park my car several blocks away and, to evade the secret police who followed me everywhere, vanish in a crowd or dart through alleys in order to reach the place of assignation.
Even so, daunting as this appears, I found my life in Budapest and in Hungary in general to be very challenging, exciting and richly rewarding. There were three reasons for this: the first was the sense of success every time I penetrated this tightly closed society and acquired information which pleased my Ambassador and Washington (and aroused no little envy in some colleagues).
The second reason was something I came to understand in the course of my four years in Hungary, namely my ethnic heritage and a particular appeal to my "clients", who had for long been familiar with Armenia and the problems of its people—especially its intellectuals—under Soviet oppression, and, therefore, looked upon me less as an American diplomat than as an extended member of the Hungarian family.
Thus, my Armenian ethnic identity not only opened doors and eased access into very senior levels of Hungarian communist society but also led to a number of fascinating episodes.
The first occurred only weeks after I began my new assignment when, one morning, our young consular officer, Harry Gilmore—the very same Gilmore, who thirty years later, would become the first American Ambassador to the new Republic of Armenia—phoned to say he was interviewing a woman named Ardzatian for a possible visa who, upon learning from Gilmore that I was Armenian, wanted to meet me. That led to a quietly arranged dinner with my wife and her husband in their apartment. Of the many stories she told that night the most impressive concerned the fateful day when tanks and troops of the Red Army filled the streets of Budapest and all the occupants of apartment buildings were ordered out. In her desperation, she ran into the street and shouted to the "liberators"—"Are there any Armenians among you?”
A head appeared through the opening of one tank, a Red Army lieutenant, who asked her in Armenian what was wrong, listened to her plea, and ordered the troops to accompany her and Mr. Ardzatian back to their apartment, while all the Hungarians were taken away for questioning. "To this day, twenty years later," she told us, "that Armenian Red Army officer, now a colonel stationed in Szekesfehervar, visits us and brings us food and gifts."
We spent a number of Sunday afternoons with the Ardzatians exchanging stories and when they heard that I had been chief of the "Voice of America's"
Armenian Service, they eagerly informed us that they were avid listeners and turned it on. That was a memorable day, for I found myself listening with awe to the familiar voices of my former colleagues—from behind the Iron Curtain!
Another remarkable experience which arose out of my ethnic origin occurred from a totally unexpected source. Ever since the squelching of the Hungarian Revolt in 1956, the Embassy had served as refuge for His Eminence Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty. During his nightly walks in the Embassy courtyard when we conversed in Hungarian, we established a close rapport when he discovered my Armenian background.
His knowledge of Christianity in Armenia and the Armenian Church astonished me, but even more so when he said his closest friend in Seminary days was the priest who had since become Gregory Cardinal Agajanian. My family and I visited Rome soon thereafter and took a personal message from Mindszenty to his friend, "my brother in Christ", who, overjoyed to receive such first-hand news, gave us a golden cross studded with stones for his reclusive friend in Budapest.
His Eminence also told me that he knew there were some Armenians in Hungary and attempts had been made to establish a church. I was able to confirm this with the Ardzatians, but it was not until 1985 when I spent six weeks at a Conference in Budapest on the U.S. Human Rights Delegation that I located the church—a Mekhitarist Armenian Catholic Church whose Pastor was the gentle and kindly Father Kadarian. When my wife and I attended service one Sunday morning, we and the Ardzatians were four of the seven in the audience.
The service lasted one hour and was primarily in Hungarian, with a brief section in Armenian. Later, Father Kadarian, who had shrewdly shortened his name to Kadar (the name of the Hungarian Communist Party chief, who had approved $100,000 for converting a mansion into the Armenian church in 1972) showed us around his small museum of Armenian artifacts and rare books about the genocide—a museum in which he rightly took exceptional pride. Father Kadar had been in Hungary since 1944, he told us, and had worked with Raoul Wallenberg in saving the lives of countless Jews.
Yet another instance of the Hungarian-Armenian connection as it related to me occurred in 1967. Washington had requested that 1 travel to Leningrad to evaluate a U.S. Exhibit for possible use in East Europe. I agreed on the condition that 1 and my wife also be allowed to travel to Armenia. We had, of course, always wanted to see the country of our forebears, and also wanted to accept the invitation of a young Armenian art critic named Shahen Khatchaturian who only three months before had brought to Budapest an exhibit of Martiros Saryan's paintings under the sponsorship of the Soviet Embassy. The Soviet cultural attache, a burly Russian who always teased me about being Armenian, had sent me a special invitation.
Our exciting conversations long into the night in Budapest with Shahen and the five days with him in Yerevan were absolutely exhilarating, and because of him we spent many hours with Saryan, Minas Avetissian, Hrachia Kochar, Serge Paradjanov, Gostan Zarian and, not unexpectedly the Armenian KGB. (Eight chapters in my book, The Serpent and The Bees, are devoted to these events.)
Three weeks later at the annual Embassy Independence Day Reception, my wife and I were surrounded by the Hungarian intellectual elite led by their two most famous writers Tibor Dery and Gyula Illyes, editors Ivan Boldizsar and Tibor Petho, composer Zoltan Kodaly, and hosts of others. They deluged me—as their wives did mine—with questions about conditions in Armenia, with emphasis on the cultural life, the plight of writers, the poets, the composers, the journalists and the degree of latitude they enjoyed in the post-Stalin era. As Dery said to me, "Hungarians and Armenians have much in common, but one thing stands above all: a rich cultural heritage oppressed by a foreign tyranny. That is why Armenians enjoy our compassion."
A friendly awareness of Armenians was frequently reflected by many, as for instance, one evening after dinner, when Zoltan Kodaly, visiting us with his wife , urged me to go to Transylvania and spend time in two towns which, he said, were populated largely by Armenians— Erzsebetvaros and Szamosujvar, which was later re-named Gherla by Romania. Kodaly maintained that there was an Armenian Church in the latter town which contained an original Titian.
In the two years that remained in my tour in Hungary, many aspects of the bonds between Armenians and Hungarians surfaced, often in unusual ways. Two of them are worth recalling.
I had made an acquaintance of a poet named Gabor Devecseri. But soon after our initial meeting, he seized me by the arm one day at a reception and exclaimed “I just found out you are Armenian! Why didn't you tell me before?" The reason for his excitement, it emerged, was the he had long been absorbed in my Armenian history and had based several poems on Armenian themes.
Perhaps even more astonishing was the experience with prominent painter Lili Orszagh who inserted distorted images of letters of the Hebrew alphabet in her dark and moody paintings. But one night when we were entertaining her, she found an Armenian book in our library and upon opening it, uttered a cry of pleasure. "These letters are works of art in themselves, and I will use them." (Although we have several of her works with the Hebrew letters, we departed Hungary before she had completed her "Armenian period.'')
But the most memorable moment was yet to come and when it did, it was overwhelming and left me in a euphoric state which returns even now, thirty years later whenever I recall it. That moment had a preface which I was to later recognize as its preparation.
At one of the last receptions in Budapest I was to attend, I was warmly greeted by Deputy Foreign Minister Bela Szilagyi who appeared to be in an expansive mood. Szilagyi was viewed by the Embassy as a 'communist hard-liner,' so that his remarks on that occasion caught me off-guard.
"Because we know you are leaving, I shall tell you something. Whenever the Embassy told us anything about American policy toward Hungary, it was only you we believed because you never told us an untruth. We shall miss you," he said.
What occurred after that might easily have been considered an anti-climax, had its source been anyone else. Szilagyi had long known that I was Armenian.
I had been told by a number of journalists and cultural friends that Party Chief Janos Kadar knew of my heritage and remembered me of one encounter when I had introduced him to visiting movie star Kirk Douglas and interpreted for them. But I had not given much importance or heed to their comments until several importuned me to be absolutely certain to attend the Hungarian National Day Reception in Parliament.
I attributed their insistence to possible awareness that my assignment in Hungary would shortly be concluded and this would be my last opportunity to be in the same room with the entire Hungarian Politburo.
At the appointed hour the large reception Hal was packed with diplomats, cultural figures, editors and journalists, economists, members of the Central Committee and the whole Politburo—with the exception of one — engaged in light conversation but with anticipatory eyes on the main door waiting the entrance of the Number One personality in Hungary.
Then, without further ado, the double doors swung wide and Janos Kadar entered the hall and from fifty feet away walked directly up to me his hand extended and said —"I understand you are leaving Hungary. I am sorry you are going. I know you have helped improve relations between our countries, I wish you success."
We shook hands, he turned and directed attention to others who stood nearby. But I and most of the Assemblage stared in disbelief at this astonishing episode at the height of the Cold War.
To this day, I continue to believe that this amazing gesture by a Communist political leader—Moscow's choice to lead Hungary after the devastating anti-Soviet revolt of 1956—was recognition of the vital role that diverse ethnic origins play, in this instance Armenian, in the conduct of American diplomacy.
