In Hungary apparently:
Kadar won public support with his liberalising reforms and his likeable [sic], modest manner.How do we know?
The critics usually claim that their opposition was due to "human rights," but I believe a large part of their anti-communism can be explained by a single word. Snobbery.That is a novel argument, the most credible reason is the absence of democracy in the former Soviet bloc and the other communist countries. The scare quote is not reassuring.
But for the snobs, the wrong class of people was in charge.This is supposed to be a defence of a socialist country! Mrs Clark asserts the Chess Grandmaster
[Lajos] Portisch believes that had Kadar not had to leave school and take up an apprenticeship at an early age, he too could have become a chess grand master.So his own loss was the workers' gain? When the Queen Mother died in 2002, A.N. Wilson came up with a similar argument about how she could have been a significant cultural figure under different circumstances. The word for this kind of approach is hagiography:
I regarded Kadar as a relative, like a favourite uncle or grandfather. I liked the way he talked - he was never pompous or condescending and never arrogant.Almost a saint then.
As the respected British historian Eric Hobsbawm has stated, Kadar was "the most successful ruler of Hungary in the 20th century."Hobsbawm is hardly a neutral observer. He was on the 'other' side in the Morning Star-CPB/Marxism Today-CPGB split more than twenty years ago. Which leads me to think describing him as "respected", for this readership, might have been a mistake. If so, what a shame.
