Imre Nagy
Nagy Imre
Premier for thirteen days
Refusing clemency after his secret trial death sentence, June 1958: "My only consolation is the conviction that sooner or later the Hungarian nation and the international working class will clear me of these grave charges."
A Hungarian communist. Taken prisoner by the Russian army in the First World War, he joined the Bolsheviks and became an agrarian expert during his Moscow exile. As agriculture minister in 1945 he carried out the land reform, but clashed with Rákosi and Gerő over the pace of collectivization in 1948–49 and was pushed aside. Prime minister from July 1953, he pursued a 'New Course' of lower investment, security for individual farms and the closing of the internment camps, until his dismissal in 1955. Returning as premier in the 1956 revolution, he proclaimed a multi-party system and neutrality, and was executed after a secret trial in 1958.
Career timeline
- 1916–1921POW in Russia; joins the Red Army and the party
- 1930–1944Moscow exile; agrarian research for the Comintern
- 1945–1946Agriculture Minister: land reform
- 1953–1955Premier: the New Course, camps closed, peasant burdens eased
- 1955Removed and expelled
- 1956.10–11Premier of the rising: multi-party rule, neutrality
- 1958Hanged after a secret trial
- 1989Reburied on Heroes’ Square