Prime minister who swung Hungary towards Germany and drafted the Second Jewish Law, then fell over his own Jewish ancestry
Born to a Catholic family in Budapest, he was an economist in the finance ministry who became Gömbös’s finance minister in 1932 and president of the National Bank in 1935. Prime minister from May 1938, he turned foreign policy towards Germany and Italy from that autumn, and under him the First Vienna Award returned southern Slovakia to Hungary. He pressed for a dictatorial reorganisation and the Second Jewish Law, but resigned in February 1939 when opponents exposed his Jewish ancestry. In 1940 he founded the pro-fascist Party of Hungarian Renewal, and after the German occupation of 1944 he served in Sztójay’s cabinet. Sentenced to death by a People’s Tribunal, he was shot in 1946.
Career timeline
- 1928–1932Director, Hungarian National Bank
- 1932–1935Finance minister under Gömbös
- 1935–1938President, Hungarian National Bank
- 1938–1939Prime minister; introduced the Second Jewish Law
- 1940–1944Founder and leader, Party of Hungarian Renewal
- 1944Minister of economic coordination under Sztójay
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.
Career timeline
- 1919Joined the Hungarian Communist Party; served in the Soviet Republic's Red Army
- 1925–1940Arrested on a Comintern mission home; nearly fifteen years in prison
- 1945Mayor of Budapest
- 1945–1949Secretary-general of the Supreme Economic Council
- 1949–1953President of the National Planning Office; MDP Politburo member (from 1951)
- 1954–1955Head of the Council of Ministers' secretariat under Nagy
- 1956–1958Refuge in the Yugoslav embassy; internment in Romania
A party leader who pushed market reform within socialism
In the 1989 Moscow talks, he defined the party’s aim as “democratic socialism, self-government, parliamentary democracy, and economic democracy.”
Rezső Nyers was a Hungarian economist and socialist-bloc reform politician who sought to combine social control with greater efficiency by reshaping the planned economy. After leading the 1968 New Economic Mechanism, he lost influence as orthodox forces halted the reforms, but returned to the center of politics during the transition of 1989. Elected chairman of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party in June 1989, he led its four-member collective presidency and became the founding chairman of the Hungarian Socialist Party in October. His career captures the tension of trying to democratize socialism and introduce market mechanisms as the ruling party dissolved into a multiparty order.
Career timeline
- 1940Joined the Social Democratic Party of Hungary
- 1956Minister of Food Industry
- 1960–1962Minister of Finance
- 1968Architect of the New Economic Mechanism reform
- 1974–1981Director and later scientific adviser, Institute of Economics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
- 1987–1988Chairman of the parliamentary Reform Committee; Minister of State
- 1989Chairman of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party; founding chairman of the Hungarian Socialist Party
