Architect of Hungary's Sovietization who built one-party rule through 'salami tactics'
On November 7, 1940 — the day after his train from Horthy's prisons reached Moscow — Rákosi stood beside Stalin atop Lenin's Mausoleum to review the October Revolution Day parade on Red Square.
Supreme leader of the Hungarian Communist Party and Working People's Party, he returned with Soviet forces after WWII to build Hungary's people's democracy. A veteran of Kun's 1919 Soviet Republic and a Comintern secretary, he endured 16 years in Horthy's prisons before Moscow secured his release in 1940. Returning in 1945, he used 'salami tactics', slicing away rivals piecemeal, to consolidate one-party rule. As prime minister (1952–1953) he drove crash industrialization. After Stalin's death, Khrushchev forced his resignation in July 1956; the October Revolution sent him into Soviet exile for life.
Career Timeline
- 1919People's Commissar of Trade, Hungarian Soviet Republic; commands Red Guard and Red Army
- 1921–1924Secretary, Executive Committee of the Comintern
- 1925–1940Imprisoned under the Horthy regime (8.5-year sentence, later life; freed 1940)
- 1940–1945Leads the Foreign Bureau of the Hungarian Communist Party, Moscow
- 1945–1948General Secretary, Central Committee of the Hungarian Communist Party
- 1948–1956First Secretary, Central Committee of the Hungarian Working People's Party (MDP); General Secretary until 1953
- 1952–1953Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Hungarian People's Republic
- 1956–1971Forced exile in the USSR (Kirghizia, Arzamas, Gorky)
Related historical events
- 1956.02The Twentieth Party Congress and the Secret SpeechHungary's Stalin, forced out in July 1956His Stalinist rule, his forced resignation in July 1956, and the failure of his successor Gerő formed the immediate backdrop to the Hungarian Revolution.
- 1956The Hungarian RevolutionStalinist hardlinerThe architect of the Stalinist rule that provoked the uprising, ousted just before it.
'Salami Tactics' and the Construction of One-Party Rule (1945–1949)
Rákosi's method of seizing power is summed up by the phrase he himself coined: 'salami tactics' (szalámitaktika). After the Independent Smallholders' Party won 57% in the 1945 elections, Rákosi's Communists set about slicing away their coalition partners piece by piece, 'like salami.' First they formed a left-wing bloc to fracture the Smallholders; then a new electoral law in 1947 disenfranchised roughly half a million citizens (8.5% of the electorate). In that year's elections the Communists became the largest party with 22.25%, while the Hungarian Independence Party, which had won 13.4%, was banned on fraud charges. In June 1948 Rákosi forced the Social Democratic Party into a merger, creating the Hungarian Working People's Party (MDP), and in May 1949 a single-list election delivered 97% of the vote, completing formal one-party rule.
The climax of the consolidation was the show trial of Interior Minister László Rajk in 1949. Rajk, a Communist with an outstanding anti-fascist record, was Rákosi's potential rival. He was arrested on fabricated charges of 'Titoism' and 'Zionist conspiracy,' and hanged after a dramatic public trial in September 1949. The Rajk trial set the pattern for purges across Eastern Europe and allowed Rákosi to eliminate internal party dissent decisively. Stalin called Rákosi his 'best Hungarian pupil,' and Hungary became the model case of Sovietization. The salami-tactic formula was subsequently referenced as a standard Communist power-grab methodology throughout the emerging Eastern Bloc.