People of the Revolution and the USSR

Hungary Counter-revolutionary forces 1874–1946 ○ Died in prison

Transylvanian aristocrat who, as prime minister in 1921–1931, consolidated the Horthy regime with a restricted franchise and a League loan

Scion of an old Transylvanian noble family, he entered parliament as a liberal in 1901. He joined the counter-revolution in Szeged in 1919 and became prime minister in April 1921, after King Charles’s first return attempt. He founded the Unity Party, secured its victories by restoring the open ballot in the countryside with the Franchise Act of 1922, concluded a pact with the Social Democrats, and stabilised the economy through League of Nations membership and a loan. He resigned in the Depression in 1931 and in 1941 opposed war with the Soviet Union. Arrested by the Soviets in 1945, he died in a Moscow prison in 1946.

Hungary Counter-revolutionary forces 1886–1939 ○ Illness

Gömbös’s successor as prime minister in 1936–1938, who announced the Győr programme and introduced the First Jewish Law

Born in Budapest, he began his civil-service career in Pest County in 1909 and after the revolutions was head of Győr and Komárom counties. He entered parliament in 1927 and became Gömbös’s minister of agriculture in 1935. Succeeding Gömbös as prime minister in October 1936, he promised a return to Bethlen’s constitutional course and in 1937 banned the Party of National Will and had Szálasi imprisoned. In March 1938 he announced the Győr programme, but after the Anschluss he brought pro-German politicians into the cabinet and negotiated with the extreme right, and resigned in May. The First Jewish Law his government introduced passed under Imrédy, and from December 1938 until his death he was Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Hungary Counter-revolutionary forces 1890–1950 ○ Died of illness in exile

White Terror commander whose detachment around Kecskemét carried out the Orgovány killings and the Izsák pogrom

Born into a wealthy peasant family in Kecskemét, he was a fighter pilot in the Austro-Hungarian Aviation Troops by the end of the First World War. In Szeged in 1919 Horthy’s chief of staff ordered him to “make order” around Kecskemét, and he became the de facto military governor of the Danube–Tisza Interfluve. His men took abducted people to the forest of Orgovány to be tortured and executed and staged a pogrom at Izsák; about a third of their victims were Jewish. Because he did not back King Charles’s return in 1921, Horthy’s amnesty shielded him, and he sat in parliament from 1927 to 1931. After the war he was sentenced to death in absentia, and he died of illness in Vigo, Spain, in 1950.