Architect of Hungary's Sovietization who built one-party rule through 'salami tactics'
Released on 30 October 1940 and reaching Moscow on 6 November, Rákosi stood beside Stalin atop Lenin's Mausoleum the next day as the October Revolution Day parade crossed Red Square.
General secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party (1945–1948) and then general secretary, later first secretary, of the Hungarian Working People's Party (1948–1956), he ruled Hungary as its de facto leader from 1948 to 1956. Arrested in 1925, he received an 8.5-year sentence in 1926 and a life term in 1935, serving over fifteen years in prison before reaching Moscow in November 1940. After returning in 1945 he dismantled the democratic parties through 'salami tactics' and forced the Social Democrats into a merger to build one-party rule, bearing responsibility for mass imprisonment, forced-labour camps and the Rajk show trial. He handed the premiership to Imre Nagy in 1953 yet obstructed reform as first secretary, was removed on 18 July 1956, expelled from the party in 1962, and died in Gorky on 5 February 1971 after deportation to Krasnodar, Tokmak and Arzamas.
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)
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
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.
A party leader who pushed market reform within socialism
In the 1989 Moscow talks, he defined the party’s aim as “democratic socialism, self-government, parliamentary democracy, and economic democracy.”
Rezső Nyers was a Hungarian economist and socialist-bloc reform politician who sought to combine social control with greater efficiency by reshaping the planned economy. After leading the 1968 New Economic Mechanism, he lost influence as orthodox forces halted the reforms, but returned to the center of politics during the transition of 1989. Elected chairman of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party in June 1989, he led its four-member collective presidency and became the founding chairman of the Hungarian Socialist Party in October. His career captures the tension of trying to democratize socialism and introduce market mechanisms as the ruling party dissolved into a multiparty order.
Career timeline
- 1940Joined the Social Democratic Party of Hungary
- 1956Minister of Food Industry
- 1960–1962Minister of Finance
- 1968Architect of the New Economic Mechanism reform
- 1974–1981Director and later scientific adviser, Institute of Economics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
- 1987–1988Chairman of the parliamentary Reform Committee; Minister of State
- 1989Chairman of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party; founding chairman of the Hungarian Socialist Party
