Arpad Goncz: The first post-communist president of Hungary who triggered democracy

The late Hungarian president played a key role in consolidating his country’s newly-democratic regime

Portrait of Hungarian President Arpad Goncz taken 03 May 2000 in Budapest

Shortly after he was elected Hungary’s first post-communist president in 1990, Arpad Goncz, who played a key role in consolidating his country’s newly-democratic regime, remarked that he felt his entire life had been one long preparation for becoming head of state. Or could it be, he wondered, that his unexpected elevation to the presidency was just the latest chapter in an eventful and varied career – another unusual experience he could draw on as a writer?

Goncz’s musings were typical of the man. He was reflective, thoughtful, and aware of the ambiguities that burdened central European intellectuals who wanted to engage professionally in democratic politics yet had lived most of their lives under dictatorial regimes; who were committed to freedom of expression yet subject to some of the most stringent censorship.

With his other qualities – a fine sense of humour, an informal, avuncular approach and tolerance for other points of view – he acquired a degree of popularity that no other Hungarian politician has come near to matching.

Part of Goncz’s magic was the smile that rarely left his face. He believed many of Hungary’s more calculating post-communist politicians were misled by into believing that he was a harmless fool; it was a costly mistake. For, as Goncz put it, these politicians soon realised that the presidential ingredient was not a tasty raisin but a stone in the fruit cake they had concocted. Several times he sent legislation back to Hungary’s parliament or referred it to the Constitutional Court when he believed a bill lacked constitutionality, legitimacy or fairness.

Goncz’s stance helped establish the presidency as an institution with more than ceremonial functions – which earned him criticism from right-wingers. His interventionism also contributed to giving the nascent Constitutional Court greater credibility. These two developments proved important in creating a system of checks and balances.

Born in Budapest, Goncz gained a degree in law in 1944. He was wounded fighting in Hungary’s small anti-Nazi resistance movement ad then captured by Soviet soldiers who were rounding up prisoners of war, regardless of whether they had fought the Red Army or not. Goncz escaped, and almost immediately became an activist in the centrist Smallholders’ Party which won a landslide victory in 1945. As leader of the party’s youth wing in Budapest, Goncz seemed destined for a bright future.

But the communists, with the Kremlin’s backing, suppressed all other parties after 1948. Goncz was exiled from public life. After a period of unemployment, he found work as a welder and pipe-fitter. In the early 1950s he enrolled at university to study soil sciences.

His studies were interrupted by the Uprising of 1956 which was crushed by the Soviet army. As strikes and civil disobedience continued, it seemed that the Kremlin might be persuaded to accept some kind of a compromise deal to give Hungary some freedom. Goncz helped Istvan Bibo, a minister in the overthrown government, draft a document to KPS Menon, the Indian ambassador in Moscow, in the hope that India might be able to mediate.

That landed Goncz in jail in 1957 on a charge of treason and earned him life imprisonment at a secret trial. Life behind bars was harsh, but for Goncz also something of an intellectual club – as he put it, “the best minds of Hungary were in prison”. He acquired a new profession when his wife sent him an English grammar. His jailers exploited his new skills when they put him on the translation team and set him a daily task of 12 pages to translate. His output ranged from graphology manuals to war memoirs.

On his release during a general amnesty in 1963, Goncz wanted to return to work on the land. However, because of his past he could not enrol at university so he became one of Hungary’s leading translators of 20th century US fiction, including the works of James Baldwin, EL Doctorow, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and John Updike, as the climate became more liberal.

Goncz started to write stories and plays. But his relationship with the authorities remained difficult, and for several years permission for publication of his works was withheld. He was 52 when his first book and only novel, Sarusok (The Sandal-wearers, 1974) appeared. It was followed by six plays and several collections of stories and essays. They reflected Goncz’s preoccupation with the moral dilemmas facing those who lived under a dictatorship.

Even as the communist system was being dismantled in 1989, few would have expected that Goncz would emerge as Hungary’s president. He owed his election by MPs to a deal between the conservative Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF), the senior partner in Hungary’s centre-right coalition, and its SZDSZ adversaries. Key legislation often required a two-thirds majority in parliament, which the MDF and its allies lacked. The SZDSZ agreed to the removal of the requirement in exchange for Goncz being elected president.

Goncz soon became Hungary’s favourite public figure. In autumn 1990 he countermanded an order from the government for the use of troops to transport supplies during a blockade of roads and bridges by taxi-drivers protesting against increased fuel prices. He helped block legislation for the partial restitution of property confiscated during the communist era which would have favoured former landowners over other property-owners. He resisted attempts to impose collective penalties on communist-era officials. And he refused to accept the government’s moves to tighten control over state radio and television.

Goncz was re-elected for a second term, and his role became less controversial. Outside Hungary he continued to act as an all-purpose, roving ambassador; within Hungary he remained a point of reference, able to articulate people’s apprehensions about the human cost of the transition to a market economy. That provided a source of strength to many who found it difficult to cope, even if Goncz did not quite succeed in his goal of “putting the smile back on Hungary’s face”. In a country of pessimists, he behaved as befitted someone who was honorary president of the Hungarian branch of Optimists International.

Arpad Goncz, politician and author: born Budapest 10 February 1922; married 1947, Maria Zsuzsanna Gonter (two daughters, two sons); died Budapest 6 October 2015.