Interview with József Kajdi – Episode 1

I am József Kajdi, I was born on the 19th of May 1958, in Budapest. My parents were first generation intellectuals, who are sadly no longer with us.

I come from a Transylvanian family on my mother’s side and from a Swabian family in Vojvodina on my father’s side. The original family name is Kern, a Swabian name that my grandfather had to change when he became a railway man in Hungary. The interesting thing is that he was asked to make suggestions, and he suggested three names.

It goes without saying that none of them were accepted, instead they gave him the name Kajdi, and so that’s basically how my family name became Kajdi. My father’s early 13 year old certificate even says “Kajdi (Kern) József”. I found this out much later, of course, through family stories.

The interesting thing is that, on the paternal side, all six children set to Hungary from Vojvodina, five of them went on to Germany, or what was West Germany back then. But my grandfather fell in love with a Hungarian girl, so he stayed in Hungary, and she became my grandmother.

As I emphasized, my parents are first-generation intellectuals. My father, by the way, was a career soldier, from the age of 19. And my mother was a postal clerk.

Both of them were party members, by the way, in the case of my father, it stems from his profession, being an army man. And my mother I can safely say was a staunch supporter of the communist party. That’s why it was very interesting for me to observe their reactions, when they were confronted with how much they had been deceived by the system they believed in.

So I grew up in a family environment like that, with my father being a career soldier. Even though I was born in Budapest, we moved very early on to Ercsi, where my father was stationed. He was also the chief of logistics in the barracks there.

I started elementary school there, and later, when he was transferred back to Budapest and started studying at the Miklós Zrínyi Military Academy, and in the meantime he also graduated from the University of Economics, we moved back to Budapest. We lived in a flat without much comfort, this was around about 1964-65, and this flat was made out of school classrooms, with a ceiling about as high as this studio’s, it had no heating in the small room, in the big room there was an iron stove with an iron sink, in the corridor there was a toilet for public usage, and a common bathroom, which was provided for us for two hours a week on Wednesdays. So it was a great relief, and a great improvement for the family, when in 1968 my parents, my father were given a two-room service apartment in the housing estate at Kelenföld, which was built at that time.

I was then sent to the primary school on Bikszádi Street, as a fifth grader. I finished there, and from there I was admitted to the Kaffka Margit Gymnasium, which is at the beginning of Villányi Road. This is now St Margaret’s High School.

I wanted to apply for the English department, but as I had not had any English language training before, I was automatically enrolled in Russian, and the second language was German, and I ended studying Russian for four years. I can honestly say that at that time, at that period, I was not interested in politics at all. This was probably also due to my family background as well.

My parents didn’t really talk much about politics, and if I’m very honest, they didn’t really talk to each other either, and that led to a divorce when I was in high school. I stayed with my mother, and I have to say that it was one of the best times of my life, because my mother allowed me to do everything and I was completely free to live my life, from the time I was in third grade. I was allowed to have long hair, which was the reason why I was regularly criticized, to put it mildly, by my teachers and the head of my class at secondary school, but I really felt that I was living in a completely free world.

The first time I was touched by politics was perhaps when, on 15 March, which was not a public holiday at the time, we learned that Gábor Demszky and his followers were going to hold a Maoist demonstration in the city center on 21 March, and then it was expressly forbidden for secondary school students to go out on the streets at all, and we had to stay in school, where there was of course a commemoration of 15 March, for the 1919 Council Republic of course. In addition, for some reason, the head of the class regularly appointed me as narrator for such important celebrations, so on 7 November, etc., during such important socialist celebrations, when the high school always held these commemorations in the then Bartók cinema on Bartók Road, and I had to be the narrator there.

I emphasize once again that politics did not really affect me, I graduated from high school in 1976, I was accepted straight away to law school, which was a choice that was actually due to the fact that I did not really enjoy my real subjects, I was not particularly interested in them, and I was only 4. We found an old lady, an old teacher, who, when she saw me for the first time, didn’t even want to let me into her flat because I appeared in front of her with my long hair, but then, thank God, two of my classmates came along and put in a good word for me, and so she accepted me as a student. So much so that I almost got an A in math, falling one point short. Despite this, math is still not really my favorite subject.

But the humanities, history and grammar, I really liked, and so my future choices were either the Faculty of Humanities or the Law School, however, my class teacher said about the latter that they would never accept me, because they already had a receptionist. So I would just like to say that there was no great love between that teacher and me. Afterwards he told me that he said this to me expressly as a provocation, so that I’d go the extra mile to prove that they will accept me.

I did indeed get into the Faculty of Law, but immediately afterwards, I was to move to Kalocsa as a pre-admission student. That was on September 2nd, 1976.

I was a conscript there for 11 months, and for the first four months I was not allowed to come home. For us, I have to say, politics was still a very distant thing, even as we were preparing to clash with the Austrian mountaineers. All our training was about that.

We didn’t even know that the first Samizdat was published in Hungary in 1977. We had our share of political indoctrination of course. And then there was an interesting incident during my service in Kalocsa.

Since my father was a professional soldier, we were suddenly called down to the political officer’s office, and it turned out that those who were called down there had career soldiers or policemen for their fathers or mothers. And we were asked to report on our platoon mate if he made a statement that did not conform to the system. I can honestly say that I didn’t really understand what that meant at the time.

It was obviously a recruitment opportunity or the like. Also part of the story is that there was no political awareness on my part, I was simply disturbed by the very fact that we were being asked to do this, and there were maybe twenty of us, of which only one boy actually took up the offer, all the others refused and left, including me. He, let’s say, became the company, and later the regimental clerk, and he was the one who could go home the most.

He probably fulfilled that obligation or duty. I started law school in ’77 after my conscript service. At that time, especially the first year and a half, I was still living with the great freedom my mother allowed me.

I didn’t really study, I didn’t take university seriously, but when I got my first A in constitutional law after a year and a half, somehow that gave me such a boost and such an appetite for studying, especially for subjects like constitutional law, that I started to take university seriously and after that I practically had no grade lower than a B. In addition, I must say that political life was starting to flourish around that time.

In the sense that a number of our university friends, group mates and classmates had the idea that, in addition to the KISZ, another political organization should be set up, at least within the university faculty. I remember that there were big university meetings for us, there were no teachers there, where there was a huge debate about whether or not we should set one up. In the end, unfortunately, the majority decided not to.

In fact, the decision was taken by many that we should join the party, I mean the ruling party, the MSZMP, and that we should carry out the necessary reforms from within. In Hungary, for example, this is how Istvan Stumpf, the future minister and constitutional judge, and who was a fellow soldier in Kalocsa, so much so that he slept under me on the bunk bed, and was also a fellow member of my university class, joined the party at the same time, and he too joined the party with the same consideration, that the party should not be dismantled but reformed from within. This story takes place around 1980-81.

In addition, we had a teacher called László Kéri, who, although he was from the Department of Scientific Socialism, began to give us special lessons. These special classes were usually in the local pubs near the university, where we would go after class or meet in the evenings and discuss the world over a sufficient amount of wine and onion bread, and he had a very enlightened approach about things, and he thought we were one of the best groups he had. He had already taken notice of Isti Stumpf, and he said that he was going to be the future István Bibó, so he was very fond of Isti Stumpf, and he was also very fond of my best friend Zoltan Fejes, but he was very fond of the whole group in general as well.

To be honest, while I went to these meetings sometimes, I was still uninterested in the matter, and I mostly kept away from it. That being said, I watched these discussions with great interest, and sometimes participated in them, but I didn’t feel the affinity at all to get more seriously involved. Anyways, time passed, we finished the state exam, college was over at once, so you had to decide what your future would be.

A lawman can’t get a job in many places, the career is quite closed in that respect. You could try to be a lawyer. Now in ’82 the legal profession is a very closed profession.

It’s essentially a fixed number of people. Practically only those who have the right connections, mostly through family connections, can become a lawyer. So if the father is a lawyer ,then he could bring his son into the law firm.

Or you could wait for a position to free up on an extinction basis. For me, that path was completely closed. You could go on to be a judge or a prosecutor.

Somehow, for me, that was not an attractive career. You could have gone to a law firm. Again, no.

And then the unexpected opportunity came. My father had heard that the Zrínyi Miklós Military Academy was looking for a young law graduate to teach basic legal skills to professional soldiers. I took the job.

Moreover, it was attractive because at first the offer said that I would not even have to dress as a professional soldier, and could do the job as a civilian employee. And two weeks before I was due to enlist, I was told that, unfortunately, they had decided that I had to be a professional soldier after all. Then I was quickly appointed a lieutenant, so I started teaching as a lieutenant, in uniform, and as the youngest teacher at the Zrínyi Miklós Military Academy. I was assigned to the Alma Mater Military College as my training, and then I was assigned to the Kilián Flying College in Szolnok, which was a bit, I must say, disadvantageous, because I had to wake up at 4:30 in the morning, to get to the place by eight.

And sometimes fate granted me the grace to teach at the academy itself when our senior teachers were either on leave or on sick leave. And so it happened that on one occasion when I went into the classroom, there were only majors, lieutenant colonels, officers of a much higher rank than me. And who did I see among the students? My former company commander from Kalocsa, and political officers from my former regiment, who also jumped up when I went into the classroom as a lieutenant and reported, as they should in class.

I taught for four years at the Zrínyi Miklós Military Academy. I can honestly say that for me those four years were terrible. Partly because I always thought that everyone was looking at me because of the uniform.

And I would wake up in the morning with a knot in my stomach, while obviously no one even noticed that I was in uniform, because everyone else was also walking around in one. Moreover, at the academy you didn’t actually have to be a soldier, so there was no salute, you could go without a cap, so it was almost like a civilian workplace. Nevertheless, for me, those four years were terrible, and that’s why I was very much prepared to leave at some point.

Part of the reason was that I had to teach 12 hours of basic law in total. This included penal code, constitutional law and, of course, everything from the national defense law to the service regulations. So it was only possible to teach the minimum of basic legal knowledge, and after a while I began to question why I had studied for 4.5 years at university, when you could learn this subject matter in about two hours and pass it on.

So I really wanted to leave, but I have to be honest, I was very cowardly and I found it very difficult to bring myself to finally announce it. Partly because I expected it would not be so easy to leave. But by then, let me look at one of my hosts, my former university group mates and friends and I started going to certain gigs as professional soldiers, like URH, Europa Kiadó, Sziámi, Kontrollcsoport, etc.

So these were the alternative bands of the time, I also have to mention the Committee, and The Galloping Coroners, so music culture gave me a certain additional freedom, and in the meantime my best friend regularly provided me with issues of the Beszélő (popular Hungarian samizdat). The first issue of the Beszélő was published in 1982, so I started to get a little bit interested and involved in things that were not mentioned in the official party communication. While I stress, I was an official soldier and I had to attend monthly political training.

Add to that the fact that I was not a party member, and neither was Mihály Kupa, the brother of the future Minister of Finance, Laci Kupa, who was my roommate, and older than me by two years. Thanks to this, we were assigned every month to the political officer at the academy, who tried to get us to join the MSZMP, because we were worsening the statistics of the academy, because there are 1,200 official soldiers, of whom a total of six were non-partisan, and we were the smallest department, and we two represented this group, so we were worsening that particular statistic. Laci and I came up with the idea that of course we were not going to join, and I stress that I did not have any conscious political position on this at the time.

It was laziness, and what I said before about why I was not particularly interested in politics. And what we came up with was that we said that it would be such an honor to be a party member, which we were not yet sufficiently prepared for and worthy of. And so we managed to make it so that while I was a professional soldier, I avoided being a party member.

Yes, but the head of the department retired, and the retirement age was 55, so a professional soldier could retire without any problem, and the head of the department called me into his office, and his deputy was sitting beside him, and they told me whether I knew that he was retiring. Well, the whole academy knew of course. I said yes, then they asked me whether I knew who was going to be his deputy, who was going to replace him.

Well, I said, of course the whole academy knows that this man, who was sitting here, was going to be his replacement. Then he asked “but do I know who will then be the deputy to the head of the department?” I said I have no idea, they will probably have to choose him first.

And he said that “we were thinking of you.” Well, that hit me like a bolt of lightning, because I had been preparing for months to say that I’d had enough and that I wanted to leave. And then, instead of saying “thank you very much, it was a great honor, etc. etc., because it was presented in such a way that me, the youngest deputy head of department in the history of the academy, was going to be immediately promoted to this position. I said “thank you very much, but I was actually thinking of resigning.

Well, the shocked one was not me after that, of course, but them. It took half a year of wrangling to be able to resign. There were threats, there were honeyed words, and I was even promised a general’s position.

That didn’t mean I could wear pajama pants, but I was promised a position. Of course, the threat was that I must already have my future job, and they were going to come after me and stop me from getting it. The truth is that I didn’t have one.

So I was brave in that respect because they could not touch me, because, once again, this setting created this situation, where I announced my resignation. So I had no idea where I could go now. But in this respect, this six-month-long tug-of-war was a good opportunity to try to find a new job.

But then my father-in-law came to my rescue, because he had heard that the Ministry of Justice was looking for a young lawyer who also understood the law of the armed forces. After all, there was legislation being passed that the MoJ, the Ministry of Justice, had to comment on, and they didn’t have such a person. I reported in uniform and I went to the head of the department at the time, saying that I had heard that they were looking for such a lawyer, and I would like to work here if possible.

I was called in twice for an interview, and I even had to present my thesis, and after the second interview or meeting I was told that it was okay, I could start. And so on the first of April 1986, I started my job at the Ministry of Justice as a chief draftsman, a codifier, in the Department of Law Preparation, and I must say that I was extremely lucky, because it was a golden age in the history of the Ministry of Justice until 1990. I am not the only one making that claim, this was also said by people much smarter and higher than me, who were in higher positions at the time, and the development of this golden age obviously had a lot to do with the relaxation of the regime that was taking place at that time.

By this time, I was a regular reader of the Beszélő, as I mentioned earlier, I read it in secret of course, at home, hidden from my mother so that she does not see it. I read about the meeting in Monor in ’85, which took place at the Monor camping site, where nearly 50 democratic opposition intellectuals gathered, with a very interesting group of speakers, including Ferenc Donáth, István Csurka and  Sándor Csoóri, Bauer and János Kis were all speakers at this event, where they discussed a lot of things, and it turned out that the conflict between the rural and the urban intellectuals was very apparent, and they couldn’t agree on anything except that the communist system must be overthrown. So this is the only common point in their views at the time.

Returning to the Ministry of Justice, on the first of May, that is, a month after I read about the meeting, I had to carry the Ministry of Justice table or sign at the May Day parade, back then these parades were still regular, and naturally, the ministries had to march as well, alongside the state factories and plants. We only found out later, that the clouds of Chernobyl have amassed above Hungary in the last couple of days, but nobody knew about it at the time, since the media was deeply silent about it.