People of the Revolution and the USSR

Party of Communists in Hungary (KMP) Communism 1897–1932 ✕ Executed

Hungarian Communist leader hanged in 1932 under the summary jurisdiction proclaimed after the Biatorbágy bombing

Born in Erdőfüle, he bore the surname Hollender until 1916. A bank clerk, he organised an anti-militarist movement with Ottó Korvin during the First World War and was arrested in 1918. In the 1919 Soviet Republic he was Korvin’s deputy in the political department of the people’s commissariat of the interior. After its fall he fled via Vienna to Moscow and worked for International Red Aid, and was sent home on Béla Kun’s proposal to run the illegal party press. Arrested in July 1932, he was sentenced to death although he had no part in the Biatorbágy bombing, and was hanged with Sándor Fürst on 29 July.

Hungarian Working People's Party (MDP) Communism 1898–1959 ○ Heart disease

Overseer of culture in the Rákosi era

In June 1953, Soviet leaders criticized Rákosi’s concentration of power and discussed a reorganization of Hungary’s leadership. Révai was not invited to the Moscow talks and was dropped from the party Political Committee that month.

Born into a Jewish middle-class family, he was a founder of the Hungarian Communist Party in 1918, lived in the Soviet Union in 1934–44 and edited the party daily Szabad Nép in 1945–50. From 1948 to 1953 he controlled all aspects of Hungarian cultural life, and from 1949 he was also minister of culture. Pushed into the background by Rákosi from 1952, he was not invited to the Kremlin talks of June 1953, where Molotov mocked him as "everything rolled into one" in ideology. He left the Political Committee in 1953 and briefly returned in 1956.

Hungary state institutions 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.

Hungary state institutions Communism 1903–1983 ○ Natural causes

Rákosi-era planning chief who fell from grace and joined Imre Nagy

He joined the Hungarian Communist Party at sixteen in 1919, fought in the Soviet Republic's Red Army and spent most of the Horthy era in prison. Released with Rákosi in 1940, he went to the Soviet Union and returned as a Soviet officer in 1944. Mayor of Budapest in 1945, secretary-general of the Supreme Economic Council (1945–49) and head of the National Planning Office (1949–53), he drafted the Five-Year Plan and ranked among the party's leading 'Muscovites'. Stripped of every post in February 1953, he joined Imre Nagy's line and headed the government secretariat in 1954–55; in January 1955 the Soviet Presidium condemned him with Nagy. In November 1956 he fled with Nagy to the Yugoslav embassy, was interned in Romania, and later lived outside politics as a writer.

Hungary state institutions Communism 1904–1965 ○ Natural causes

Defence minister in Rákosi's ruling foursome

Amid Hungary's 1953 leadership change, Soviet leaders criticized him and he was dropped from the new Political Committee. Expelled from the party and convicted in 1956, he remained imprisoned until 1961.

Born to Jewish parents in Abaújszántó, he became a communist in the 1920s, fought in the Spanish Civil War and lived in the Soviet Union before returning in late 1944; from 1945 he sat on the Hungarian Communist Party's Political Committee and Secretariat. As defence minister in 1948–53 he formed the ruling "four" with Rákosi, Gerő and Révai. In June 1953 the Soviet leaders did not invite him to Moscow, and Bulganin criticized him for trying to make himself out to be a great army commander. Dropped from the new Political Committee, he was expelled from the party and convicted in 1956, released in 1961, and worked as an editor and publisher.

Hungary state institutions Communism 1906–1993 ○ Natural causes

Founder of Hungary's secret police, and its prisoner

From 1945, Gábor Péter led Hungary’s political police, preparing and conducting show trials. Arrested in 1953, he was sentenced to life imprisonment the following year, then released under an individual amnesty in 1959.

Born into a Jewish tailor's family in Újfehértó, he joined the Hungarian Communist Party in 1931. He headed the Budapest political police in 1945 and led the state security service (ÁVO, then ÁVH) in 1945–52, directing purges and torture including the Rajk trial. In early 1953 Rákosi, imitating the Soviet "anti-Zionist" purge, had him arrested. In June 1953 Beria pressed for his case to be reviewed, but in 1954 a court martial sentenced him to life as a Zionist spy. Released under an individual amnesty in 1959, he worked as a librarian.

Hungary state institutions Communism 1909–1949 ✕ Executed

Interior minister who built the ÁVH secret police, then fell as the first major victim of Stalinist show trials in Eastern Europe

At his show trial, responding to the prosecutor's demand for the death penalty: 'I fully agree with your statements, Mr. Prosecutor, and want to state in advance that I will consider the verdict of the court justified' (September 1949)

A Hungarian Communist politician who served as Minister of Interior (1946–1948), founding the ÁVH secret police and directing the early purges that built the Rákosi regime. He had fought in the Spanish Civil War as political commissar of the Hungarian battalion of the International Brigades and organized the underground resistance during World War II. Seen by Rákosi as a rival, he was demoted to Foreign Minister and then arrested in 1949 on fabricated charges of Titoism, becoming the first major victim of the Stalinist show trials in Eastern Europe. His rehabilitation and reburial on 6 October 1956 before 100,000 mourners became a demonstration against the regime and a key precursor to the Hungarian Revolution three weeks later.

Hungary state institutions Communism 1911–1990 ○ Natural causes

A communist judge who enforced political trials

Even in 1989, he maintained that Imre Nagy was guilty and expressed no regret for the judgment.

Ferenc Vida was a communist lawyer who had taken part in the illegal movement, endured imprisonment, and rose through Hungary’s postwar party and judicial bureaucracy. After the 1956 Revolution he became one of the judges who imposed the greatest number of death sentences in the state’s retaliatory trials. In the 1958 trial of Imre Nagy, he chaired the Supreme Court’s People’s Court Council, sharply restricting defendants’ statements and the defence’s requests for evidence, and sentenced Nagy, Miklós Gimes and Pál Maléter to death. He still refused in 1989 to acknowledge the trial’s illegality or express remorse.

Hungary state institutions Communism 1912–1989 ○ Natural causes (illness; cause disputed)

Architect of 'goulash communism', enforcer of the 1956 reprisals

"Whoever is not against us is with us" (1961)

Born illegitimate in Fiume (now Rijeka), registered in Italian as Giovanni Giuseppe Czermanek, and took his mother Borbála Csermanek's surname. He began a typewriter-mechanic apprenticeship in 1927 and qualified as a journeyman in 1929. Joining the illegal KIMSZ and party in 1931, he did underground work and served prison terms. As Interior Minister (1948–50) he backed the Stalinist line and was involved in László Rajk's purge; arrested in 1951, sentenced to life in 1952 and released in 1954. First Secretary from 25 October 1956, he crossed to the Soviet side on 1 November, accepted the intervention, proclaimed a new government at Szolnok on the 4th and approved Imre Nagy's execution; hundreds were executed and tens of thousands imprisoned. In 1961 he launched 'whoever is not against us is with us', opening amnesty and reform. He resigned in 1988 and died in Budapest in 1989.

Hungary state institutions Communism 1913–1986 ○ Posthumous rehabilitation, 1989

A politician who linked revolution and reform while carrying the wounds of dictatorship

On 4 November 1956, he helped Imre Nagy draft a condemnation of the Soviet attack before taking refuge in the Yugoslav Embassy.

Ferenc Donáth was a Hungarian communist politician and agricultural economist who helped shape postwar agrarian policy. His role in land reform and collectivization was followed by imprisonment in a 1951 purge trial, rehabilitation, and a lasting confrontation with the tension between party policy and state violence. In 1956 he sided with Imre Nagy, helped frame the uprising as a revolution, and condemned the Soviet intervention; sentenced to 12 years in the Imre Nagy trial, he was released in 1960. He then devoted himself to agricultural research and helped bring Hungary’s opposition groups into dialogue in the 1980s, before being legally rehabilitated in 1989.

Hungary state institutions Communism 1917–1957 ○ Died in prison

A reform communist journalist

On 4 November 1956, as Soviet forces attacked, he took refuge with his family in the Yugoslav Embassy.

Géza Losonczy was a Hungarian journalist and politician who emerged from the communist movement while challenging its repression and dogmatism. Alongside Imre Nagy’s reform circle, he became involved in the upheaval over popular mobilization and the limits of one-party rule, serving as a minister of state in the revolutionary government of 1956. Arrested after the Soviet intervention, he died in prison while on hunger strike awaiting trial, his death forming part of the state repression directed at the Imre Nagy group.

Hungary state institutions Communism 1922–1999 ○ Natural causes

A young premier who bore responsibility at the revolution’s threshold

He later recalled accepting the premiership as “a bad decision.”

András Hegedüs was a Hungarian Communist politician and sociologist whose path ran from loyal cadre of the Rákosi regime to critic of the system. Backed by Rákosi and Ernő Gerő, he became prime minister, but during the 1956 Revolution he signed the appeal for Soviet military intervention and bore responsibility for a paralysed leadership. After returning from Moscow, he built a significant career in sociology, protested the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, and was expelled from the party.

Hungary state institutions Communism 1933–2016 ○ Died

The reformist Politburo member who called 1956 a 'popular uprising' and dismantled his own party's orthodoxy

In West Berlin he said the East German 'anti-fascist protective rampart' was a 'disgrace' that had to come down.

A reformist member of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (MSZMP) Politburo and the ideological patron of the reformers. On 28 January 1989 he told radio listeners that the 1956 Hungarian Revolution was a 'popular uprising,' demolishing the party's foundational lie; in May that year, in West Berlin, he called the Berlin Wall a 'disgrace.' Together with Otto von Habsburg he sponsored the Pan-European Picnic in August 1989, opening the first crack in the Iron Curtain, and later stood as the Socialist Party's presidential candidate but was defeated.