The Reformed pastor-president who declared neutrality before Soviet tanks
At a press conference on November 1, 1956, asked about the likelihood of a new Soviet assault: "Such a tragedy is humanly impossible… it will never take place."
A Reformed pastor who became the face of Hungary's post-war democracy as founder and leader of the Independent Smallholders' Party. After his party's landslide victory, he served as prime minister (1945–46) and was elected the republic's first president, but communist salami tactics forced his resignation in 1948 on fabricated treason charges against his son-in-law; he spent the next eight years under house arrest. In October 1956 he joined Imre Nagy's revolutionary government as minister of state and was present at the November 1 cabinet meeting that voted unanimously to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact and declare neutrality. Arrested after the crushing of the uprising, he was sentenced to six years and amnestied in 1959; the Supreme Court annulled his conviction in 1989.
Career timeline
- 1921–1929Reformed pastor; edited church periodicals
- 1936–1944Smallholders MP; pressed to exit the war; hiding after German occupation
- 1945–1946Prime Minister
- 1946–1948President of the Republic; forced to resign
- 1948–1956House arrest
- 1956.10–11Minister of State in Nagy's revolutionary government
- 1958–1959Sentenced to 6 years; amnestied 1959
- 1989Rehabilitated
Smallholder turned titular head of state
In June 1953, Soviet leaders included Dobi, who held little real power, in Hungary’s delegation. János Rainer suggests the invitation may have reflected a misunderstanding of his office or Smallholder past, or a wish to give the talks an official, interstate character.
Born to a poor peasant family in Szőny, he finished only six years of primary school and worked as a day labourer. He supported the 1919 Soviet Republic and was active in the agricultural workers' movement. A left-wing Smallholder leader who sided with the communists, he was prime minister in 1948–52 and, as chairman of the Presidential Council in 1952–67, titular head of state. He was invited to the Kremlin talks of June 1953, which Rainer attributes to a Soviet misreading of his real power or his standing among the peasantry. When Molotov raised the dissolution of forcibly organized cooperatives, Dobi objected.
Career timeline
- 1948–1952Served as prime minister of Hungary.
- 1952–1967Served as head of state as chairman of the Presidential Council of the Hungarian People's Republic.
Smallholder premier of Hungary's second republic, forced out by Soviet-backed communists
At the Swiss border he signed his resignation on the hood of a car, the price of getting his son back.
A smallholder politician who became the first prime minister of Hungary's second republic under Soviet occupation (1946-47). He co-founded the Smallholders' Party with Zoltán Tildy in 1930, serving as its first general secretary, and after the party's 57 per cent landslide in 1945 rose from speaker of the assembly to premier, where he tamed the pengő hyperinflation with the forint. But as Rákosi's communists used salami tactics to strip away Smallholder deputies, he was blackmailed into resigning while on holiday in Switzerland in 1947, his son held as a hostage, and went into exile in the United States. His memoir The Struggle Behind the Iron Curtain (1948) became the founding Western account of the people's democracies of Eastern Europe.
Career timeline
- 1930–1945Co-founded the Smallholders' Party and became its first general secretary
- 1944.04–10Imprisoned by the Gestapo; went underground after the Arrow Cross coup
- 1945–1946Minister of reconstruction, speaker of the assembly, High National Council
- 1946–1947First premier of the second republic: the forint, the Paris peace treaty
- 1947.06Forced to resign in Switzerland; exiled to the United States
- 1947–1970Émigré politics; International Peasant Union and memoir
