On the side of the bullies.

On Burchett, by Tibor Meray; Callistemon Publications, 2008, $24.95.

THIS BOOK by the well-known Hungarian author Tibor Meray has an unusual genesis. Meray and Wilfred Burchett worked together as propaganda journalists behind the communist lines during the Korean War. Meray was spreading germ warfare allegations, and Burchett interrogating allied prisoners of war, activities of which neither could be proud. But soon afterwards, their paths diverged. Burchett went on to report communist show trials in Eastern Europe, where he agreed with the implausible accusations of the government prosecutors. Many people were executed for no reason. Meray, up till then a fervent communist apparatchik, began to have doubts about the show trials, and became a dissident communist in Hungary.

Out of this came the incident which caused Meray to write this book. Meray asked Burchett to his home in Budapest to meet some surviving victims of the show trials, hoping Burchett would be moved by their fate, and report this in the West. Burchett declined. But Meray was shocked to read some decades afterwards in Burchett's autobiography that Burchett described this gathering as the beginnings of a counter-revolutionary plot, which led to the Hungarian revolution. Burchett slandered Meray and his colleagues as cowards and illegal gun-runners, even though some had been executed after the uprising failed. Burchett was retrospectively damning the victims. This breach of hospitality, to put it mildly, was too much for Meray, it stuck in his craw, and he decided to investigate Burchett's whole career in the light of this incident. If Burchett could treat Meray and his friends this way, what had he done to others?

Meray analyses key incidents in Burchett's career, producing detailed arguments demonstrating Burchett's unreliability as a witness. This is an important book because Meray himself was not a cleanskin--he shared many of Burchett's original weaknesses. So in writing this book Meray has had to admit guilt in many things he and Burchett were complicit in. But, unlike Meray, Burchett continued to defend communist atrocities even after communist parties themselves had ceased to defend them. Burchett never admitted he had helped condemn innocent people. He put it all down the memory hole, and blithely went on to similar pro-communist campaigns elsewhere, transferring his affections from a great mass murderer, Stalin, to an even greater one, Mao.

Meray makes some general points about Burchett. Communism began with the noble aim of supporting the oppressed against the powerful, but Burchett anomalously ended up supporting the strong battalions, powerful governments, against defenceless individuals. Meray quotes Burchett saying that, if a journalist sees a bully bashing a child, he should drop his objective role as a journalist, and go and help the child. All very well, but how often in his own life did Burchett go and help the bully?

There is not much left now of Burchett's reputation as a political ideologue. A few lone supporters soldier on against damning recent evidence, unearthed by Peter Hruby from Soviet bloc files and published in the Australian, confirming Burchett's Communist Party membership.

Perhaps, though Burchett's support of communism may repel us, he was at least a good, even an outstanding journalist? Meray has his doubts. Burchett never came to a situation and simply reported it; he imposed his own ideological ...