Founding member of the Hungarian Communist Party and foreign minister before and after the 1956 revolution
A founding member of the Hungarian Communist Party in 1918, Horváth served as a political officer and in the political police of the 1919 Soviet Republic. Imprisoned in 1921, he reached Moscow in a prisoner exchange in 1922, worked as a librarian at the Marx–Engels Institute and qualified as a mechanical engineer. Sent home in 1933 to help the underground party, he was arrested again, held in Szeged prison until 1944 and deported to Dachau. A diplomat after 1945, he became foreign minister in July 1956 and, except during the revolution, held the post until his death in 1958.
Activities and affiliations
-
1918–1948
Party of Communists in Hungary (KMP)
Social movements and organizing -
1946–1956
Hungary state institutionsAmbassador
Diplomacy and international organization -
1956
Hungarian Working People's Party (MDP)
Political and party leadership -
1956–1958
Hungary state institutionsMinister of Foreign AffairsMain
Diplomacy and international organization -
1956–1958
Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (MSzMP)
Political and party leadership
Career Timeline
- 1918Founding member of the Hungarian Communist Party
- 1919Red Army political officer and political police in the Soviet Republic
- 1921Arrested and sentenced to ten years
- 1922To Moscow in a prisoner exchange
- 1934.11–1944.03Imprisoned in the Csillag prison, Szeged
- 1944Deported to Dachau
- 1946–1956Diplomat in Moscow, Berlin, the United States, London and Prague
- 1956.07.30Foreign minister
- 1956.11.04Foreign minister in the Revolutionary Worker-Peasant Government
- 1957Head of the Hungarian UN delegation
1956: foreign minister on either side of the revolution
Imre Horváth became foreign minister in András Hegedüs's government on 30 July 1956, just after Rákosi stepped down and Ernő Gerő became first secretary; on 21 July he had joined the Central Leadership of the Hungarian Working People's Party.
In early November, at the height of the revolution, Imre Nagy took the foreign ministry himself, and Horváth was out of the post from 3 to 12 November. In the list of the Revolutionary Worker-Peasant Government that János Kádár announced on 4 November he was again foreign minister. A member of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party from November, in 1957 he led the second Hungarian delegation to the UN General Assembly, defending the Soviet intervention and the Kádár government abroad. He died in the early hours of 3 February 1958 from complications after gallstone surgery on 31 January.