A one-liner which would be funny if it weren’t for the fact it earned Uncle Torma a one-way ticket to a labour camp in Soviet controlled Hungary.  Such was the risk of saying anything critical of the Great Experiment in Human Happiness. 

‘You are nuts, Musilla,’ said Uncle Torma, an old welder whom the AVO had arrested because he had asked, at a party meeting, whether this was already socialism or whether it would become even worse. 

It isn’t clear if he survived his punishment, but I am glad that Faludy, who did, remembered to mention him.  

Source: György Faludy, My Happy Days in Hell, trans. Kathleen Szasz (London: Penguin, 2010), p. 438

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