People of the Revolution and the USSR

Hungary Communism 1873–1943 ○ Natural causes

Printer and Social Democratic leader who headed the six-day “trade-union government” after the fall of the Soviet Republic

Born in Ravazd in Győr County, the son of a butcher, he became a typesetter, led the printers’ union and the consumer co-operative movement, and joined the Social Democratic leadership in 1909. He was labour and welfare minister in the Berinkey government in 1919 and resigned his party posts in opposition to the merger with the Communists and the proclamation of the dictatorship of the proletariat. When the council government resigned on 1 August 1919 he became prime minister, abolished the Soviet Republic and revoked its decrees, but on 6 August he was ousted by István Friedrich with Romanian backing. He then helped rebuild the Social Democratic Party and sat in parliament from 1922 to 1931.

Hungary Communism 1879–1947 ○ Natural causes

Bricklayer turned Social Democrat who chaired the Revolutionary Governing Council of the Hungarian Soviet Republic

Raised in a Protestant family in Kiskunhalas, he worked as a bricklayer, joined the labour movement and in 1901 the Social Democratic Party, and led the building workers’ union and the Workers’ Insurance Fund. He backed the merger of the Social Democrats and Communists on 21 March 1919 and, as chairman of the Revolutionary Governing Council, became the Soviet Republic’s formal head of state and prime minister, though real power lay with Béla Kun. After the fall he was education minister in the Peidl government; captured by the Romanian army, he escaped from Cluj and lived in exile in Bratislava, Vienna and Paris. Refused permission to return after the war, he died in Paris in 1947.

Party of Communists in Hungary (KMP) Communism 1892–1971 ○ Died

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.