The author of this article, which was submitted for publication as a letter to the CRIMSON, is a former Hungarian freedom fighter. Although he escaped his country last year and is now a freshman at Harvard, he prefers to remain anonymous because of possible reprisals against his family.

Photographs courtesy of the Association of Hungarian Students in the United States.

Reproduction of the article in whole or part without the written approval of the author is strictly forbidden.

In Moscow and Budapest the official party line soberly declares that last October's Hungarian revolution was provoked by western imperialist agents. Don't believe it, and don't think it is believed by anyone in Hungary, least of all the small minority of communist quislings who rule my homeland.

They know what is to them the bitter truth: the revolution erupted because Hungarian students didn't believe what they had been taught and couldn't be made to swallow munists would pursue anywhere they munist educational system, in eleven years of trying, failed miserably to make communists out of Hungarian children.

I am a Hungarian refugee student and having spent most of my youth under this system, I feel that my fellow students can profit from knowledge of its operations, its aims and its results. The system is an indication of educational policies the communists would pursue anywhere they gained control. It perhaps provides clues to further difficulties ahead in the satellites.

To understand this system, especially in the satellites, we must realize that it is the only education that has been available in these countries for a decade and that the entire educational set-up becomes the most important media of overall propaganda in the hands of the regime.

Before and during World War II these countries were victims of Hitler's fascism. Following his defeat, their suffering peoples happily expected to forget totalitarian terrors and achieve democratic governments, and they welcomed as liberators the soldiers of the Russian army. But the liberators overstayed their welcome, undermining and finally destroying their prestige by acts of plundering and barbarism. And, still worse in the long run, they became the intimidating force that set up puppet governments and forced non-communist parties and politicians into eclipse. In the complete nationalization that followed the schools were, of course, included, and a systematic program was initiated to indoctrinate the satellite youth with the communist ideology.

The immediate goal of the puppet governments was the separation of the children from their parents. This was essential if they were to fully possess the minds and spirits of the children and raise a dedicated, zealous generation of communists. The parents, having lived part of their lives in happier days before Hitler and war, infected with the democratic notion that man can live according to his own wishes and enjoy certain basic rights, could not be trusted to teach the new communist concepts to their children. Worse still, the parents might spread this infection to their children by exposing them to outmoded religious ideals and other beliefs diametrically opposed to communist truths.

Under the circumstances it was not difficult for the regime to effect the separation of families. Chronic economic hardship made it necessary for both father and mother to work long hours six days a week, leaving them little time to devote to their offspring. Yet even this was too much for the authorities. The government established "seminaries" in the nationalized factories and various other places of business where ideological lectures were held for workers after they had finished their daily chores. The worker who failed to frequent these lectures in order to hurry home to his family was subject to dismissal and, in most cases, imprisonment. In this way the communists got their chance to begin poisoning the spirits of the children in the nurseries and the grammer schools.

The famous communist slogan reads: "Religion is the opium of the people." Consequently the communists began with the negation of God. This was the fundamental point of their educational system--the negation of everything in disagreement with their philosophy, beginning with the ultimate. Faith in God was substituted with faith in the communist regime, particularly in the deified communist leaders. The goal of this "secular religion" manufactured in Moscow was to supersede the church and belief in God with a host of communist demigods, starting with Lenin and Stalin and ending with Rakosi for Hungarian consumption, Georghiu Dei for Rumanian, Boleslaw Bierut for Polish, and Wilhelm Pieck for East German. By this device the communists overrode the first commandment: "Thou shalt have no Gods before me."

To tell a small child that God is a fabrication isn't difficult because he has not yet learned to doubt his teachers. It was made easier in the satellites because the parents could not effectively refute what was taught. Some parents dared not interfere because of the fear that their children might, with innocent words, betray them to the school authorities. Braver parents did what they could to plant seeds of truth in their children. Some declared in desperation, "I would rather have no children than foster a communist."

Always one of the most important courses in any educational system is history, influencing our views of people and institutions through presentation of their developments. In the communist system all history is explained by Marx's assertion that "the history of society is the history of class struggles." Rich and poor constantly clash, one defending what the other is seeking, so the communists assert, and they conveniently rewrite all of history to support this thesis.

There are two ways to lie. One is the direct delusion, the telling of something other than the truth. The other is deception by silence, the telling of only part of the story. The communists used both means. They omitted everything that could possibly be omitted, when it did not jibe with the Marxist theory.

Things too important to be left out were reshaped into convenient forgeries. There were only four lines in our books on the American Revolution and the United States Constitution, but there were separate volumes on the Russian Revolution. America's role in World War II was downgraded in every possible way. They taught us that Germany assailed the USSR and Russia had to fight quite alone against the Nazi military mechanism. The West, they declared, opened the second front only after the heroism of the Russian people, under the genius of Stalin and the leadership of the Communist party, had Germany virtually conquered. And the western front was successful then only because the Germans had to reinforce their eastern lines so heavily!