864.00/4–346: Telegram
The Minister in Hungary (Schoenfeld) to the Secretary of State
priority
[Received April 4—6 a.m.]
631. During Prime Minister’s visit yesterday (my telegram 630, April 360) after calling attention to American Government’s established policy not to interfere in purely internal political matters, I took occasion in line with Department’s telegram 288, March 19, repeated to London as 2435 and Moscow 499, to suggest that continual concessions to minority groups in interests of maintaining the coalition might in the end involve negation of the peoples mandate given in November elections which we recognize were free and untrammeled. I added that in face of this danger it was his responsibility to determine when the time had come for the will of the electors to take precedence over expediency of keeping coalition. Prime Minister replied he was ever conscious of that responsibility and added that the signing of peace treaty and withdrawal of occupation forces would in all probability raise question whether coalition is to be maintained and if so in what form. I called his attention to possibility that if events between now and the conclusion of peace proceeded at the pace they had taken since the election he might find himself faced with accomplished fact of Leftist control fastened upon country with no possibility of realizing purposes of the voters. Prime Minister repeated his often voiced conviction that alternative to coalition and specifically to his own Prime Ministership is “anarchy”.
[Page 276]In Gascoigne’s absence I presume British have taken parallel action through Hungarian representative at London since Bede61 has told us in confidence following his arrival here that in his report to Hungarian Government last week he had described Bevin’s attitude towards Hungary as one of surprise that a small minority could control policies of government and that Smallholders who had mandate of people did not exercise mandate. He said he told Prime Minister and Gyongyosi, and later Rakosi62 and Pushkin,63 that British could not understand a coalition government in which one minority member exercised effective power and at same time continued to attack other parties in the coalition. The British, he said, deprecated these methods. Rakosi, according to Bede, was particularly venomous against Britain and defended Communist position by stating electoral mandate for Small Holders was negative, 50% of Small Holders being out-and-out reactionaries and therefore to be discounted.
Bede said prior to his return to London today he felt his visit had salutary effect.
Repeated to London as 163 and Moscow as 152.
- Not printed; it reported that Prime Minister Nagy had called on Minister Schoenfeld to ask for support of his request for the return of Hungarian displaced property in United Nations territories not covered by the American restitution directive of March 1946 (740.00119 EW/4–346). For the substance of the American directive to Commanders of US zones of occupation in Germany and Austria regarding the restitution of property to Italy, Hungary, Rumania, Finland, and Austria, see the circular telegram of March 16, 1946, vol. v, p. 525.↩
- István Bede, Hungarian Representative in the United Kingdom.↩
- Mátyás Rákosi, Hungarian Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary General of the Hungarian Communist Party.↩
- Georgy Maksimovich Pushkin, Soviet Minister in Hungary.↩