Vera and the Ambassador: Escape and Return

367 Pages·2009·23.99 MB·English

by  Vera Blinken

vera and the ambassador
s t a t e u n i v e r s i t y o f n e w y o r k p r e s s
Vera and
the Ambassador
Escape and Return
VERA and DONALD BLINKEN
Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2009 Donald and Vera Blinken
All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form
or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Laurie Searl
Marketing, Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Blinken, Vera and Blinken, Donald.
Vera and the ambassador : escape and return / Vera Blinken and Donald Blinken.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-2663-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Blinken, Vera. 2. Blinken, Donald. 3. Ambassador’s spouses—United States—Biography.
4. Ambassadors—United States—Biography. 5. Ambassadors—Hungary—Biography. 6. United
States—Foreign relations—Hungary. 7. Hungary—Foreign relations—United States. 8. Hungarian
Americans—Biography. 9. Hungary—Biography. I. Blinken, Donald. II. Title.
E840.8.B58A3 2009
327.2092'2—dc22
[B] 2009002528
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In memory of Lili
and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
They made this possible.

CONTENTS
Prologue ix
PART I: VERA
Escape 3
Return 29
PART II: DONALD
Getting There 45
Early Days 65
PART III: VERA
Being There 93
PART IV: DONALD
Getting Things Done 169
Epilogue 281
Key Events in Hungarian History 285
Acknowledgments 289
Index 291

PROLOGUE
D
uring most of the twentieth century, Hungary, a nation
of approximately ten million people, was in the eye of
political, ethnic, and military storms. Hungarians have
never fully recovered from the 1920 Treaty of Trianon at the end of
World War I that caused Hungary to lose two-thirds of its territory
and almost half of its population. Moreover, the country could not
escape its geographic destiny, poised between the Russian Empire to
the East, the Balkans to the South, and a relentless pressure from an
aggressive Germany in the West. For most of the twentieth century,
Hungary was constantly vulnerable to external forces.
During World War II, having been promised the return of its
lost territories, Hungary sided with the Axis Powers, and its home-
grown Arrow Cross Nazi Party was complicit in the extermination of
600,000 Hungarian Jews. Following the expulsion of the Germans by
Allied Forces in 1945, Hungary fell under the iron grip of a Soviet-
controlled Communist regime.
In 1956, the Hungarians regained a sense of their identity
because, even though their attempt to break free of a repressive regime
failed, the world took notice. In the decades that followed, some of
ix
x PROLOGUE
the most talented Hungarians escaped to the West, among them a
number of world-class scientists. Those who remained at home were
often pragmatic, managing to retain some of their special character-
istics. In what came to be known as “goulash communism,” private
incentives and artistic dissent began to pierce the communist gloom.
In 1978, the United States returned the Crown of St. Stephen—the
symbol of Magyar independence—not to the government, but to the
people of Hungary. (At the request of Hungary at the end of World
War II, the United States had safeguarded the crown at Fort Knox.)
Its return gave a strong symbolic boost to U.S.-Hungarian relations,
even as the Cold War continued.
A decade later, Hungary’s dramatic opening of its border with
Austria triggered the November 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. This in
turn led to the breakup of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union
and signifi ed the end of the Cold War.
By the time we arrived to take up our post in April 1994,
Hungary had held free elections, mended relations with Western
nations, and watched the last occupying Soviet troops leave in 1991.
Hungary’s prospects, however, while optimistic, were not yet assured.
Would Hungary embrace free markets or fall back into a command
economy? Could Hungary make a 180-degree turn from the Warsaw
Pact to a Western system of collective security such as the Partnership
for Peace or even NATO? With the demise of Nicolae Ceausescu,
the Romanian dictator, and the breakup of Czechoslovakia—home
to more than two and one-half million Hungarians—how would
Hungary manage the ethnic tensions that were beginning to reassert
themselves? What would Hungary be prepared to do about restitu-
tion to its approximately 125,000 Jewish citizens, some 20,000 of
whom were Holocaust survivors? Would the Hungarian people be
able to shake off forty years of a communist mindset and a refl exive
reliance upon government to make decisions for them? Yes, the red
stars were removed from public buildings and bridges, as the Soviet
Union collapsed, but how and when would the lasting impact of
those red stars be erased?