Cover Profile: Ambassador András Simonyi
Fifty Years Later, Revolution’s Legacy
Continues to Inspire Hungarian Envoy
by Larry Luxner
On a cold, dreary November day in 1956, 4-year-old András Simonyi and his older brother stood on the balcony of their family’s Budapest apartment, staring in shock as huge, menacing Soviet tanks rumbled down their street.
“For a kid, it was exciting,” Simonyi told The Washington Diplomat. “I remember it all very clearly, and what I remember most vividly was my mother screaming, ‘Get back!’ Only recently did I realize that she was probably afraid of the sharpshooters taking us down.”
Like millions of his countrymen, Simonyi—today Hungary’s ambassador to the United States—grew up in the shadow of the 1956 uprising, a historical event whose 50th anniversary in October and November is being commemorated in dozens of countries around the world as a victory of the human spirit over totalitarianism.
But that anniversary has been marred by massive anti-government rioting that left hundreds injured and rocked Budapest over the past two months. The uproar began in September when hundreds of protesters demanded the resignation of current Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany after a tape revealed that he had lied about the state of the economy to win re-election in April.
More recent clashes took place in October coinciding with the 50th anniversary celebrations. At one point protesters even hijacked a Soviet-era tank that was part of an exhibit on the uprising and drove it toward police, who quickly quelled the rioting with rubber bullets, water cannons and teargas to disperse the crowd, bringing a tenuous calm back to Budapest. Meanwhile, the Hungarian government has pledged to stand by the embattled prime minister, who blamed the rioting on his opposition.
The embassy could not be reached for comment on the latest round of rioting, but it is clear that Simonyi does not want the recent political turbulence to overshadow the larger picture of Hungary’s tremendous democratic gains.
“Fifty years ago, the Hungarians rose up against Soviet domination. It was short-lived but very intense,” the ambassador explains. “It started out as a peaceful demonstration in support of Polish workers who had demanded liberalization, and it very quickly turned into a revolution against communism, and a fight for freedom and democracy. It was the first real effort by any country in the Eastern bloc to rid itself of Soviet domination.”
The first protest erupted on Oct. 23, 1956, and within days, millions of Hungarians joined the revolution to fight the hated Stalinist regime and its supporters. Although Soviet troops finally crushed the rebel armies on Nov. 4, those 12 days were immortalized as a brief period of freedom and glory.
The uprising claimed the lives of 2,500 Hungarians, and in the months and years that followed, hundreds more were executed by the Marxist regime reinstated by Moscow. In its aftermath, more than 200,000 Hungarians fled into neighboring countries, many finding their way to the United States.
The uprising failed, of course, and communism endured in Hungary for another 33 years. But the seeds of democracy had already been planted, and there was no turning back.
“Almost immediately after that, Hungary embarked on a slow liberalization of the system, with setbacks along the way,” says Simonyi. “But in the end, there was a reason why Hungary broke the mold. And the reason is that the communists were never able to introduce a tough regime like the one they had before 1956. In a way, 1956 was our protection by the time 1989 came along.”
The most remarkable thing about Simonyi (pronounced Shimoni) is that he doesn’t seem like a typical ambassador at all. At 54, he looks, talks and acts like a rock star in his 30s. Maybe that’s because music has played such an important role in his life. Trapped behind the Iron Curtain, the young Simonyi would stay up late at night, listening to the latest hits on Radio Free Europe and Radio Luxembourg. He even started his own band and continues to play today (see Dec. 1, 2005, column of the Diplomatic Pouch).
“In the 1960s and early ’70s, I built myself a world around rock ‘n’ roll. For me, when I was listening to music and playing electric guitar, I was in the West. This was my way of bridging this horrible barrier. Rock ‘n’ roll was to me what the Internet is today for young people.”
Although rock music was considered subversive, “by the late ’60s, the authorities realized there was not much they could do about it,” he says. “In the ’70s, they tried to figure out a peaceful coexistence with rock music, but they basically failed because this music made us more Western. Even so, it was never freely accessible until the very late ’80s.”
One of the most memorable days in Simonyi’s life was July 7, 1968—the day the young rocker met musician Steve Winwood. “Steve didn’t know how he got to Hungary. He had never been there before, and never came again,” says Simonyi, who by coincidence reconnected with Winwood for lunch the day before our interview. “That was my world. I really hated the system. Until I met my wife Nada, I always thought that what I was doing was preparing to get out of this whole mess.”
Granted, Simonyi was among the lucky ones. His father was a textile engineer with extensive ties to the West. Simonyi grew up reading English-language comic books and hanging out with the American children in Copenhagen. (This explains his impeccable, unaccented English—not to mention Hungarian, Danish, French, German, Dutch and Serbo-Croatian.)
“My idea was to eventually settle in the West, specifically Denmark,” he recalls. “In 1973, I was standing on the train station in Copenhagen. I called my mom and told her I wasn’t coming home. She said, ‘OK, don’t come home, but you won’t see us for another 15 years.’ If you wanted a career or wanted to travel, you had to join the Communist Party or leave the country. And leaving was not an option for me because if I did, my father and siblings would lose their jobs.”
Tormented by such a choice, Simonyi did the unthinkable—he joined the Communist Party. “At first, the Party didn’t want to have me,” he says. “I came into the establishment pretty late in the ’80s, but the establishment saw itself as part of the change. Like many other liberals, I was a member of the Communist Party. But was I a communist? Never. But we saw the importance of loosening the system from within. Was I a hero? Of course not, because there were hundreds and hundreds of others. I never had a guarantee that this would be a success.”
In the end, he says, three factors were essential to bringing down communism in Hungary. The first was support from foreign leaders, most notably Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr., former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
“In 1989, Bush came to Budapest and he felt something in the air. His presence meant that this time around, the United States would not just watch,” Simonyi says. “By that time, Hungary had opened to the world. It had also built very strong economic ties to the West.”
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