National radical politician who denounced the Novi Sad massacre in parliament and was executed for preparing an anti-Nazi uprising
He was born at Szarvas. In 1923 he founded the Guardians of Race Party with Gömbös but drew away, forming the National Radical Party in 1930; in the 1930s he turned to speaking out against antisemitism. In 1939 he returned to parliament for the Independent Smallholders’ Party. Turning against the war in late 1941, he called in the Christmas issue of Népszava for an Independence Front to take Hungary out of the war and bring land reform and universal suffrage; in January 1942 he warned Bárdossy of the coming Novi Sad massacre and then denounced it in parliament as “a state-organized pogrom”. Wounded in a gunfight resisting arrest when the Germans occupied Hungary on 19 March 1944, he was freed in October and in November elected president of the Liberation Committee of the Hungarian National Uprising, but was arrested again and hanged at Sopronkőhida on 24 December.
Career timeline
- 1908Doctorate in law
- 1914–1918Served with the hussars
- 1922Elected deputy for the Unity Party
- 1923Co-founded the Guardians of Race Party with Gömbös
- 1930Founded the National Radical Party
- 1939–1944Deputy for the Independent Smallholders’ Party
- 1944President of the Liberation Committee; arrested and executed
Wartime prime minister who declared war on the Soviet Union over the Kassa bombing and approved the deportation of Jews
A lawyer and diplomat from Szombathely, he moved to the foreign ministry in 1922 and headed its press department. He became foreign minister in January 1941 and, after Teleki’s suicide in April, prime minister as well. Seeking to regain lands lost at Trianon, he followed a pro-German line, joined the invasion of Yugoslavia, declared a state of war with the Soviet Union without parliament’s consent after the Kassa bombing in June, and took Hungary into war with Britain and the United States. He pushed through the deportation of “alien” Jews and the Third Jewish Law, and Horthy forced him out in March 1942. Sentenced to death by a People’s Court after the war, he was shot in January 1946.
Career timeline
- 1913–1922Official, Ministry of Culture and Education
- 1922–1941Press chief and diplomat, foreign ministry
- 1941Foreign minister
- 1941–1942Prime minister and foreign minister; war on the USSR
- 1945–1946Sentenced by a People’s Court and executed
Hungarian minority leader in Czechoslovakia who, as interior minister in Sztójay’s cabinet in 1944, organised the deportation of Jews
Born in Komáromcsehi, Komárom County (now Čechy, Slovakia), he entered the politics of the Hungarian minority in Upper Hungary, cut off by Trianon, in the early 1920s. He became chairman of the Hungarian National Party in 1933 and a deputy in Prague in 1935, and was general secretary of the United Hungarian Party. From 1938 to 1940 he was Hungary’s minister without portfolio for Upper Hungary, and in 1940 he co-founded the far-right Party of Hungarian Renewal with Béla Imrédy. As interior minister in Sztójay’s cabinet after the German occupation of 1944, he organised the deportation of the Jews with his state secretaries László Baky and László Endre. He resigned under Horthy’s pressure on 17 August. After the war he fled west, was captured by the Americans, handed over to Hungary, sentenced to death by the People’s Tribunal and shot in 1946.
Career timeline
- 1925–1933Vice-chairman, Hungarian National Party
- 1933Chairman, Hungarian National Party
- 1935–1938Member of the Czechoslovak Chamber of Deputies
- 1938–1940Minister without portfolio for Upper Hungary
- 1940Co-founded the Party of Hungarian Renewal
- 1944Interior minister
- 1946Sentenced by the People’s Tribunal and executed
From anti-communist youth leader in 1989 to architect of 'illiberal democracy'
If we are sufficiently resolute, we can force the ruling party to submit itself to free elections. If we do not lose sight of the principles of '56, we can elect a government that will initiate immediate talks regarding the quick withdrawal of Soviet troops.
Viktor Orbán vaulted to national prominence as an anti-communist youth leader with his 1989 speech at Imre Nagy's reburial, demanding free elections and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary. Elected Hungary's youngest prime minister in 1998, he led the country into NATO; after losing power in 2002, he returned with a constitutional supermajority in 2010 and began systematically consolidating control over the judiciary, media, and electoral system, building what he openly calls an 'illiberal state.' In a landmark 2014 speech at Băile Tușnad, he publicly broke with liberal democracy and named Russia, Turkey, China, and Singapore as his models. His trajectory, from anti-Soviet resistance to author of a hybrid regime that became the longest-serving in Hungarian history, makes him a defining figure of 21st-century authoritarian populism.
Career timeline
- 1988Co-founded Fidesz (Alliance of Young Democrats)
- 1989Imre Nagy reburial speech; Fidesz representative at Opposition Round Table talks
- 1990MP (Pest County); Fidesz parliamentary group leader (until 1993)
- 1993–2000President of Fidesz
- 2003–President of Fidesz
- 1998–2002Prime Minister of Hungary; led NATO accession
- 2010–2026Prime Minister; constitutional overhaul and 'illiberal democracy' state-building
