Bad Conscience to Budapest Complex

During a press conference held last January by the Hungarian writer Ignotus, a French surrealist poet (politically Marxist but anti-Stalinist) asked him what was the theoretical platform of the Workers’ Councils during the October uprising. It seemed that he needed this information in order to know how to interpret the Hungarian events.

Some people tried to make him understand that these Workers’ Councils, busy fighting the Soviet tanks, had other worries than working out a...