I consider it of great importance that a Government has been formed representing every shade and stratum of the Hungarian people that wants progress and socialism. It was a great mistake of the previous regime to become isolated from those creative elements with whose help the Hungarian road to socialism could have been successfully taken. The main task of the new Government is to make a most radical break with narrow-minded and petty trends, and to make use of every sound popular initiative, so that every true Hungarian can look upon the socialist fatherland as his own. The task of the Ministry of People's Culture is the realisation of these principal aims in the sphere of culture. The Hungarian people have an exceptionally rich tradition in almost every field of culture. We do not want to build socialism out of air; we do not want to bring it into Hungary as an imported article. What we want is that the Hungarian people work out, organically, and by long, glorious and successful work, a socialist culture worthy of the Hungarian people's great and ancient achievements, and which, as a socialist culture, can place Hungarian culture on even broader foundations with even deeper roots.

Naturally I imagined that, one day, I would meet George Lukacs. If I had asked myself what we would have to talk about, I should have thought of - what do I know? - Hegelian aesthetics, or critical realism, or Thomas Mann. But I never imagined making Lukacs' acquaintance under such dramatic circumstances, or that the first words out of his mouth would be: "Let's leave culture aside, shall we? We have more important questions to settle."... Lukacs is Minister of Cultural Affairs in the Nagy Government.

The windows of the comfortable apartment look out on the Danube. Walls of many-colored book-covers surround us .. .We sit around a large family table and we talk of things more important than culture.

The professor's son, an engineer who was ousted from the Hungarian Planning Commission a year ago, tells how the glory and riches of Hungary - its vineyards - have been ruined. Then, he explains how the mechanism for increasing production in the People's Democracies is seemingly very effective but sterile and ruinous in fact.

Finally, the conversation turns to the problem of the Party. It seems that in the present leadership of the Party, a bitter struggle is raging between two tendencies. One aims to pursue a slightly more moderate line, but actually it is the same old line. The other is revolutionary, desiring to break completely with the Stalinist traditions of the Hungarian Workers' Party, wanting to create a completely new Marxist party. Professor Lukacs naturally supports the latter tendency.

"Who else?"

"Nagy, Losonczy, Szanto, Donath, Kadar ..."

"Radar, too?" I ask ...

The professor does not understand why this name should raise any doubts.

The new Party will not be able to expect rapid success - Communism in Hungary has been totally disgraced. Collected around the Party will probably be small groups of progressive intellectuals, writers and a few young people. The working class will prefer to follow the Social Democrats. In free elections the Communists will obtain five percent of the vote, ten percent at the most. It is possible that they won't be in the Government, that they will go into opposition. But the party will continue to exist; it will save the idea; it will be an intellectual center, and after some years or some decades from now, who knows.

But at the moment, one has not yet managed to form it. In an effort to assess the situation incessant discussions are going on. All the other parties are constituting themselves today, and the Communists are again at least 24 hours behind.