Hungary: From the Smallholders' Victory to the Rajk Trial

Debrecen: The Provisional National Assembly and the Armistice

The Red Army crossed the Hungarian frontier at the end of September 1944 and by December held the east and south of the country; Budapest was encircled on 26 December and fell on 13 February 1945. In the meantime a Provisional National Assembly met at Debrecen on 21 December 1944. Its 230 delegates, chosen in the Soviet-occupied areas, represented the Communists, the Social Democrats, the Smallholders, the National Peasants and the trade unions, and on 22 December a provisional government was formed under General Béla Miklós, one of Horthy's generals who had crossed to the Soviet side in October. Of twelve ministers two were Communists, Imre Nagy at agriculture and József Gábor at trade; defence and the interior went to the Smallholders and the National Peasants.

The armistice was signed in Moscow on 20 January 1945. Hungary returned to its frontiers of 31 December 1937, undertook reparations of 300 million dollars over six years (200 million to the Soviet Union, 70 million to Yugoslavia, 30 million to Czechoslovakia), and came under the supervision of an Allied Control Commission. Its chairman was Marshal Kliment Voroshilov, with Georgy Pushkin as political adviser; the American and British representatives were there to be informed. The commission spoke on the licensing of parties, the press and government appointments, and Soviet troops were stationed under the armistice. This arrangement lasted until the commission was dissolved when the peace treaty came into force in September 1947.

The conditions of the early occupation were also a starting point of politics. From late 1944 into early 1945 Soviet forces sent several hundred thousand Hungarian civilians to labour camps in the Soviet Union under the name "malenky robot" (a little work); estimates range from 200,000 to 600,000, and they began to return only after 1947. Reparations and the upkeep of the occupying army took around half of state spending in 1945–46.

The first decision of post-war politics concerned the range of parties. The provisional government licensed only the five forces that had joined the "Independence Front" programme of December 1944; the pre-war governing party and the far-right parties were dissolved. People's courts were set up in January 1945 to try the wartime leaders, and the former prime ministers Béla Imrédy, László Bárdossy, Döme Sztójay and Ferenc Szálasi were executed by 1946.

Land Reform and Inflation

On 17 March 1945 the provisional government issued the land reform decree (600/1945). The draft was the work of the agriculture minister Imre Nagy and rested on the proposals of the National Peasants and the Smallholders. Estates above 1,000 hold (about 575 hectares) were confiscated in full, landlords' holdings above 100 hold in part, and the land of war criminals and Arrow Cross members regardless of size. Some 3.2 million hectares, more than a third of the country's farmland, were taken, of which 1.9 million hectares went to 642,000 households; the rest became state forest and state farms. Hungarian landownership had been among the most concentrated in Europe since 1848, and the reform ended it in a year. Distribution was handled by local land-claims committees, through which the Communist Party built its organisation in the countryside. The Smallholders supported the reform while objecting to irregularities in its procedure. The churches, as the largest landowners, were the largest losers, a fact that resurfaced in the conflict of church and state in 1948. Most recipients became smallholders of around five hectares, and the new ownership looked settled until Rákosi first spoke of collectivisation in August 1948.

The economy was weighed down less by the reform than by reparations and the costs of occupation. Forty per cent of industrial plant had been destroyed and most of the railway rolling stock was gone, and the Soviet Union took over German-owned assets in addition to reparations, forming Soviet-Hungarian joint companies. The government met its spending by printing money, and from the summer of 1945 to July 1946 the pengő went through the fastest inflation in history. On 10 July 1946 prices rose 350 per cent in a day, and by the end of the month a note of 10²⁰ pengő was printed. On 1 August 1946 the new forint was introduced at 400,000 quadrillion (4 × 10²⁹) pengő to one forint. The stabilisation was led by the Communists Ernő Gerő and Zoltán Vas and underpinned by the return of the National Bank's gold, which the United States had held since 1945. The Communists claimed the success as their own and, once it held, pressed for the expansion of the state sector.

The Election of 4 November 1945 and the Grand Coalition

The first test was the Budapest municipal election of 7 October 1945. The Communists and Social Democrats ran a joint list; the Smallholders took 50.5 per cent and the workers' list 42.8. The Communists had not expected the result. Voroshilov asked for a joint list and a pre-agreed division of seats in the general election too, but the Smallholders and Social Democrats refused, and the election of 4 November was held on party lists. The result was Smallholders 57.0 per cent, Social Democrats 17.4, Communists 17.0, National Peasants 6.9. Turnout was 92 per cent, and women voted for the first time.

The Smallholders had the seats to govern alone (245 of 409), but Voroshilov required the four-party coalition to continue, citing the pre-election agreement, and the Smallholder leadership agreed. Zoltán Tildy became prime minister on 15 November and the interior ministry went to the Communist Imre Nagy. Besides the interior the Communists received trade and transport; the Social Democrats industry and justice; the Smallholders finance, defence, foreign affairs and agriculture. On 1 February 1946 parliament abolished the monarchy and proclaimed a republic; Tildy became president and Ferenc Nagy of the Smallholders succeeded him as prime minister on 4 February. On 20 March the interior ministry passed to László Rajk, who reorganised the security service that year as the State Security Department (ÁVO).

Within the coalition the Communists, with 17 per cent of the seats, held the interior ministry and with it the senior appointments of the police, and in local administration they had been in place since the spring of 1945 through the "national committees". Among the Social Democrats, Árpád Szakasits and György Marosán on the left argued for cooperation with the Communists, Anna Kéthly and Károly Peyer on the right for an independent line. The National Peasants were led by Péter Veres, and among them too were figures close to the Communists such as Ferenc Erdei.

The United States judged the election of November 1945 free and recognised the provisional government. The vote became the reference point of later argument: the claim that the Soviet Union allowed a free election and the claim that its result was not reflected in the composition of the government both rest on the same facts.

The Left Bloc and the Splitting of the Smallholders

On 5 March 1946 the Communists, Social Democrats, National Peasants and the Trade Union Council formed the "Left Bloc" and demanded the expulsion of "reactionary" deputies from the Smallholders. A demonstration of several hundred thousand was held in Budapest on 7 March, and on 12 March the Smallholders expelled twenty deputies, among them Dezső Sulyok, who founded the Hungarian Freedom Party. The form of the demand was repeated thereafter: the bloc named the Smallholders' "right wing", and the Smallholder leadership let them go to keep the coalition.

In the summer of 1946 Rajk, as interior minister, dissolved some 1,500 associations including the Catholic youth organisation KALOT, after the killing of a Soviet officer in July. In December 1946 the security service arrested members of a pre-war secret society, the "Hungarian Community", and announced an investigation into a "conspiracy against the republic". The arrests spread to Smallholder figures. In January 1947 several Smallholder deputies lost their immunity and were arrested, and the party's general secretary Béla Kovács was named as the conspiracy's patron. When parliament refused on 25 February to lift Kovács's immunity, the Soviet military authorities arrested him the same day on charges of "espionage against the Red Army and underground anti-Soviet organisation" and took him to the Soviet Union, where he was sentenced to twenty years; he returned only in 1955. The United States and Britain protested to the control commission and the Soviet side rejected the protest. The Smallholders issued a statement of protest and stayed in the coalition. The "conspiracy against the republic" trial was held before the People's Court in Budapest in the spring of 1947 and imposed death sentences and long terms on defendants including former general staff officers, and several Smallholder deputies were tried afterwards. Whether the society was a real organisation, and how much of the case was the security department's construction, has been discussed by Hungarian researchers since 1989; that the society existed, and that the case was expanded into a prosecution aimed at the Smallholders as a whole, are accepted together.

1947: Ferenc Nagy's Resignation and the Blue-Ballot Election

Prime Minister Ferenc Nagy left for a holiday in Switzerland on 14 May. On 28 May the Soviet side handed the Hungarian government documents, presented as Kovács's statements, implicating Nagy in the conspiracy, and the deputy prime minister Mátyás Rákosi demanded his resignation by telephone. Nagy's young son was in Budapest. On 30 May Nagy gave notice of his resignation, and in early June the boy was sent to Switzerland. Nagy went on to the United States and published his memoirs the following year. The speaker of parliament, Béla Varga, also left the country in June. The new prime minister was Lajos Dinnyés of the Smallholders' left, and the party was thereafter led by István Dobi.

The Paris peace treaty was signed on 10 February 1947 and came into force on 15 September. It fixed Hungary's frontiers and reparations, and the control commission was dissolved. Soviet troops remained in Hungary on the ground of maintaining lines of communication with the occupation forces in Austria. On 18 February 1948 the Soviet-Hungarian treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance was signed in Moscow.

The general election of 31 August was held under a new electoral law, which disenfranchised several hundred thousand people including those connected with the pre-war parties and created "blue ballots" allowing a voter to cast a ballot away from home. After the election it emerged that Communist activists had used these slips to vote at several polling stations. The fraudulent votes are estimated at around 60,000, with some studies putting the figure higher. The official result was Communists 22.3 per cent, Democratic People's Party (István Barankovics) 16.4, Smallholders 15.4, Social Democrats 14.9, Hungarian Independence Party (Zoltán Pfeiffer) 13.4, National Peasants 8.3. The Communists became the largest party, but the four parties of the Left Bloc together held 60.9 per cent and the three opposition parties more than 35. In November parliament annulled the Independence Party's 49 seats on grounds of electoral fraud and Pfeiffer left the country. Rákosi later said of the election that "we did the right thing", and within the Social Democrats the vote divided the opponents and supporters of merger.

Merger and Nationalisation

The large banks were nationalised in November 1947, and on 25 March 1948 all firms with more than a hundred employees: the nationalisation of 25 March was carried out in a single day without prior notice and took 594 enterprises into state ownership. On 16 June 1948 parliament voted to nationalise church schools, which made up two-thirds of Hungary's schools. Cardinal József Mindszenty rejected the measure and called on teachers not to cooperate.

The Social Democrats expelled their anti-merger wing early in 1948; in February Gyula Kelemen and the other opponents were forced out and a March congress voted for union. On 12 June 1948 the Social Democrats and Communists merged as the Hungarian Working People's Party (MDP). Its chairman was Árpád Szakasits of the Social Democrats, its general secretary Rákosi, and its deputy general secretaries János Kádár, Mihály Farkas and László Rajk. On 30 July President Tildy resigned after the arrest of his son-in-law Viktor Csornoky on espionage charges, and Szakasits became president. On 5 August Rajk moved from the interior to the foreign ministry and Kádár took the interior. In September the security department became the State Protection Authority (ÁVH), attached to the prime minister's office, under Gábor Péter.

Mindszenty was arrested on 26 December. At his trial from 3 to 8 February 1949 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for treason and currency offences. The trial caused a stir in the West; the Hungarian government relied on his confession. He was freed during the revolution of October 1956. On the Protestant side the Reformed Church concluded an agreement with the state in October 1948 and the Lutheran Church in December; the Lutheran bishop Lajos Ordass, who refused, was put on trial. On 20 August 1948, at Kecskemét, Rákosi first raised the collectivisation of agriculture in public, and the first cooperatives were organised that autumn.

1949: Single List, Constitution, the Rajk Trial

In February 1949 the Hungarian Independence People's Front was formed, gathering the remaining parties on one list. The election of 15 May 1949 was a vote for or against that list, and the official result was 95.6 per cent in favour. On 18 August parliament adopted the constitution (Act XX of 1949), promulgated on 20 August, St Stephen's Day. The state became the Hungarian People's Republic, and the preamble of the constitution recorded the liberation by the Soviet army and Soviet assistance. The presidency was abolished and a Presidential Council took the functions of head of state; Szakasits became its chairman and was arrested in April 1950.

On 30 May of the same year László Rajk was arrested. He was foreign minister and had just been elected on 15 May. The arrest was Rákosi's decision, and a team of advisers from the Soviet Ministry of State Security under Lieutenant General Fyodor Belkin took part in the interrogation. On Rákosi's instructions Kádár visited Rajk to persuade him to confess; the recording of that conversation was made public in the late 1950s. From 16 to 24 September Rajk, Tibor Szőnyi, András Szalai and five others were tried before the People's Court in Budapest. The charge was that they had plotted to overthrow the Hungarian government on the instructions of the Tito government and American intelligence, and the indictment called Tito "an agent of imperialism". Rajk admitted every charge in court. On 24 September Rajk, Szőnyi and Szalai were sentenced to death, and the sentences were carried out on 15 October. Four military defendants including General György Pálffy were sentenced to death in a separate military trial. One defendant, Lazar Brankov, was a Yugoslav diplomat, and his presence showed the trial's aim at the Tito government. After the trial the party required every member to study the "Rajk case", and by 1950, alongside the re-screening of the membership, the "home" Communists Kádár, Gyula Kállai and Ferenc Donáth were arrested in turn.

The record of the Rajk trial was published in several languages and became the model for the Kostov trial in Sofia in December 1949 and the Slánský trial in Prague in 1952. Kádár was released from prison in 1954; in 1955 Rákosi said the case had been fabricated by "the provocateur Gábor Péter". Rajk was rehabilitated in March 1956, and some 100,000 people attended his reburial on 6 October.

The Word "Salami" and the Readings

In a lecture at the party's higher school in February 1952, "The Road of the Hungarian People's Democracy", Rákosi looked back on 1945–48 and said that the reactionary forces inside the Smallholders had been cut off "like a salami, slice by slice". The phrase became a name for the period in Hungary and was applied to other countries. But it is a retrospect of 1952, not a plan of 1945, and the readings of the period divide over that difference.

The official account of the Hungarian Working People's Party explained that the "people's democratic revolution" of 1945 grew over into the "socialist revolution" of 1948. The Smallholders had been a refuge for landlords and the old ruling class, and their splitting was the result of the "democratic forces" inside the party parting from the "reaction". After 1956 this account was kept with the Rajk trial rewritten as a "violation of socialist legality".

The Western and émigré account begins with Ferenc Nagy's memoir of 1948, The Struggle Behind the Iron Curtain: without the Soviet occupation and Voroshilov's intervention the majority of 1945 would have formed the government, and the events of 1947 were a coup on Moscow's instructions. Charles Gati, in Hungary and the Soviet Bloc (1986), examined Soviet documents and Hungarian party records and concluded that until early 1947 Moscow had no timetable for a one-party Hungary and that Rákosi himself had worked on the assumption of a long-lasting coalition until 1946. László Borhi, in Hungary in the Cold War, 1945–1956 (2004), held instead that the Soviet Union secured control from 1945 through the economy and the security services, and that the elections were permitted on that premise. Peter Kenez, in Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets (2006), traced the contingencies and choices of each stage between the two readings. Whether the election of 1945 was free, what its result changed, and whether the acceleration of 1947 was a response to the Marshall Plan are the questions on which the readings part. The comparison across countries is in the overview, The People's Democracies of Eastern Europe.

The institutions built in these years, and the fates of their people, carried seven years forward. In 1953 Imre Nagy became prime minister and spoke of a "new course"; in October 1956, three weeks after Rajk's reburial, the Hungarian Revolution broke out, and Tildy and Béla Kovács joined Nagy's government.