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 1875–1928 ○ Heart failure

Labour lawyer turned Communist who was interior commissar and a Red Army commander in the Hungarian Soviet Republic

Born to a Jewish family in Gelse, he became a lawyer and, as legal adviser to the railway workers’ federation, defended the leaders of the national railway strike in 1904. He joined the Social Democratic Party in 1908 and moved steadily left until he became a Communist. In March 1919 he agreed with Béla Kun in prison on introducing the dictatorship of the proletariat; in the Soviet Republic he was commissar for the interior and for trade, then commanded the Red Army’s III Corps in the northern campaign and became commander-in-chief in July. After the fall he emigrated to Austria and led the exiled Communist movement. He died in Cannes in 1928, and his ashes were placed in the Kremlin Wall.

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.

Hungary Communism 1880–1949 ○ Natural causes

Social Democratic leader who was defence commissar and Red Army commander-in-chief of the Hungarian Soviet Republic

Born to a middle-class Jewish family, he trained as a mechanic and rose through the iron and metal workers’ union to the Social Democratic leadership. He became war minister in the Berinkey government in January 1919 and took part in the merger talks with the Communists. In the Soviet Republic he was defence commissar and commander-in-chief of the Red Army, and in July, as envoy in Vienna, he agreed with the Entente missions, on behalf of the Social Democratic leadership, on removing the council government. In exile he lived in Vienna, Czechoslovakia and Sweden; he headed the Hungarian legation in Sweden from 1946 to 1948 and resigned when the Social Democrats were merged into the Communist Party. He died in Stockholm in 1949.

Hungary Communism 1890–1919 ✕ Suicide (disputed)

Communist deputy war commissar of the Hungarian Soviet Republic and a leading figure of its Red Terror

Born to a Jewish family in Nyíregyháza, he became a journalist and was taken prisoner by Russia during the First World War. After the October Revolution he organised Communist Hungarian prisoners of war in Moscow with Béla Kun, and in December 1918 he took part in founding the Spartacist League in Germany. In the Soviet Republic he was deputy people’s commissar of war and commissar of public education, and his guards became known as the Lenin Boys. A central figure of the Red Terror, which executed suspected counter-revolutionaries without trial, he flew to Moscow in late May to see Lenin. He died on 2 August 1919 after being caught crossing into Austria; the authorities reported that he had shot himself.

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.

Hungary Communism 1898–1968 ○ Natural causes

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.