ABSTRACT
In Hungary, the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which had so profoundly shaken the intellectuals and workers as well as the Communist party of Poland, evoked hardly a response. Matyas Rakosi, prime minister and general secretary of the party, together with two of his closest colleagues, Mihaly Farkas and Erno Gero, as well as Imre Nagy, one of the most respected members of the party central committee but who stood in opposition to Rákosi's policies, were summoned to Moscow in June 1953. Rakosi remained as unruffled by the mood among the intellectuals as he had been by the Twentieth Congress, at which he had been present as a delegate of the Communist party of Hungary. After his return from Moscow there was nothing in his attitude to imply any shaking of his confidence in the Stalinist course to which he was committed.
