From the Editor

Democrat of the Breakfast Table

■ Four years ago, when I was on the staff of the London Times, I was invited to meet a leading Hungarian Communist apparatchik over breakfast. I went reluctantly. My usual breakfast is lunch, and I was expecting an “I Speak Your Weight”- machine bureaucrat. But he turned out to be the democrat of the breakfast table. Discussing Hungarian politics with the easy frankness of a Western politician, he sketched the aims of his reform faction and how it hoped to outwit the hard-liners.

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Democrat of the Breakfast Table

■ Four years ago, when I was on the staff of the London Times, I was invited to meet a leading Hungarian Communist apparatchik over breakfast. I went reluctantly. My usual breakfast is lunch, and I was expecting an “I Speak Your Weight”- machine bureaucrat. But he turned out to be the democrat of the breakfast table. Discussing Hungarian politics with the easy frankness of a Western politician, he sketched the aims of his reform faction and how it hoped to outwit the hard-liners.