Gábor Zászlós

“The Independent Hungarian Initiative was actually established in the apartment of its former leader Károly Tóth in Šaľa. Several minority politicians took part in it: László Szigeti, Oszkár Világi, László Barak, an editor, a writer, and once they visited me to propose my nomination for a member of parliament. I was thinking logically – they mean a member of local committee or a city council but it appeared to be the parliament. Finally, they said I would be the deputy chairman of the National Assembly. I was wondering what was going on and took some time to think it over. Eventually I agreed and then I became a co-opted member of the parliament. Later on when Rudolf Schuster was a parliamentary speaker I became his deputy until the elections in 1990.”

"In Hungary, similarly to Eastern Germany, the private property was not abolished completely. In Hungary there were small stalls with vegetable or press and tobacco shops, they were private. The same applied to the GDR, for example there were private dentists even in socialism. So in fact, it is true that the normalization in Czechoslovakia was so consistently applied - in very Husak style. In the surrounding countries - I can’t judge Romania nor Poland, but from Hungary we had first hand information and we knew certainly what it wss like there and there were huge differences between Czechoslovakia and Hungary back then.”