People of the Revolution and the USSR

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 1878–1927 ○ Died

Professional officer who as chief of staff of the Hungarian Red Army directed the northern campaign of 1919

Born in Újpest into a German-origin Evangelical family of intellectuals, he graduated from the Ludovika Academy in 1896, studied at the War Academy in Vienna and in 1913 became its first professor from the Hungarian army. In January 1919 he joined the Social Democratic Party and as state secretary was put in charge of army organisation. Under the Soviet Republic he became chief of staff of the Red Army on 21 April, won an important victory near Miskolc and led the northern campaign, but resigned on 3 July in protest at the acceptance of the Clemenceau note and the order to withdraw. Arrested after the fall, he was sentenced to three years for treason in 1920, and from 1925 he was a member of the illegal Communist Party. He died in 1927 and was posthumously promoted to colonel general in 1945.

Party of Communists in Hungary (KMP) Communism 1886–1938 ✕ Executed

133 days of the second Soviet state in Europe, and the execution cellar 19 years later

“The Hungarian proletariat betrayed not their leaders but itself.” — last speech before the Republic's fall, 1 August 1919

A Transylvanian-born Jewish journalist turned revolutionary, Béla Kun founded and led the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, Europe's second proletarian dictatorship. In 133 days he nationalised industry, but his refusal to distribute confiscated land to peasants, turning estates into state farms, lost the countryside; Entente-backed armies crushed the Republic. In Soviet exile he became a key Comintern figure, ECCI Presidium member and head of Agitprop, backing the ultra-left "Third Period" and resisting the 1935 Popular Front turn, clashing with Dimitrov. Swept up in the Great Purge in 1937, tortured, shot in 1938, and posthumously rehabilitated in 1955.

Hungary Communism 1886–1967 ○ Died

Hungarian communist who backed Soviet intervention with Kádár in 1956 and became prime minister after the revolution was crushed

Born into a German Catholic family in Seregélyes, he studied law and was taken prisoner on the Eastern Front in 1915 and sent to Tomsk. There he joined the Bolsheviks and commanded an international POW unit; back in Hungary in 1918 he helped found the Hungarian Communist Party and was war commissar of the Slovak Soviet Republic. He lived in the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1936 and, under the name Otto Flatter, commanded the XI International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. After the war he was Budapest’s chief of police and then a diplomat. In the 1956 revolution he was interior minister under Imre Nagy, but in November he went to Moscow with János Kádár and openly backed Soviet armed intervention. As minister of the armed forces and public security in Kádár’s government he helped organise the security regiments and the Workers’ Militia, and he was prime minister from 1958 to 1961.

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.

Hungary Communism 1892–1919 ✕ Executed

Communist paramilitary commander who led the Lenin Boys and was a leading participant in the Red Terror of 1919

Born into a working-class family in Budapest, he worked as a shoemaker and served in the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the First World War. In 1918 he escaped to Soviet Russia, joined the Hungarian Communist group and studied at an agitators’ school. Back in Hungary by December 1918, he joined the sailor detachment guarding the Communist Party headquarters. Under the Soviet Republic he commanded more than two hundred men and oversaw some revolutionary tribunal trials, while his men arrested, tortured and executed suspected counter-revolutionaries without trial. Ordered to disarm by Vilmos Böhm at the end of April, the group was re-armed at his request to Béla Kun after the June rising and resumed its activities. Arrested on 4 August after the fall, he was convicted of nine murders and hanged on 18 December 1919.

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 1894–1919 ✕ Executed

Communist who ran the political police of the Hungarian Soviet Republic as head of its political investigation department

Born into a wealthy, enlightened Jewish family, he was active in the Galileo Circle and, while working as a bank official, led the illegal anti-militarist group of revolutionary socialists in 1918. He helped found the Party of Communists in Hungary and joined its Central Committee, and on 21 March 1919 he typed the text of the merger of the two parties in prison. In the Soviet Republic he first handled the socialisation of shops and then, as head of the political investigation department of the interior commissariat, hunted suspected counter-revolutionaries. After the fall he stayed behind with György Lukács to rebuild the underground party, was arrested and tortured, and was hanged in December 1919.

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 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.

Hungarian Working People's Party (MDP) Communism 1898–1980 ○ Natural causes

Hungary's last Stalinist First Secretary; his three months in power ignited the revolution

On the night of October 23, 1956, Gerő took to the radio and denounced the student demonstration: 'We condemn those who seek to instil in our youth the poison of chauvinism.'

A central figure of Hungarian communism, he joined the party at its founding in 1918 and served in the 1919 Soviet Republic. As a Comintern operative and NKVD agent, he worked across Europe in France, Belgium, and Scandinavia, and during the Spanish Civil War he directed the purge of Trotskyists, earning the epithet 'the Butcher of Barcelona.' After WWII he became Rákosi's right hand, driving the Stalinization of Hungary's economy through crash industrialization and collectivization. Appointed First Secretary in July 1956 after Rákosi's forced resignation, he refused reform; on the evening of October 23 his radio broadcast denouncing student demonstrators as 'fascists' and 'chauvinists' detonated the Hungarian Revolution, and within forty-eight hours he was replaced by János Kádár and fled to the Soviet Union.

Party of Communists in Hungary (KMP) Communism 1903–1932 ✕ Executed

Member of the Hungarian Communist leadership hanged with Imre Sallai after a summary trial that used the Biatorbágy bombing as a pretext

Born in Rum to Jewish parents, he worked as a clerk at a rubber factory in Budapest, belonged to the clerical workers’ union and joined the Communist Party in 1926. Repeatedly arrested from 1928 and released for lack of evidence, he lost his job; in 1930 he joined the party leadership and was soon arrested again. In 1932, under the summary jurisdiction proclaimed after the Biatorbágy bombing, he was sentenced to death together with Imre Sallai. Despite a campaign by the Hungarian Red Aid and protests by Attila József and others, he was hanged on 29 July.

Hungary 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 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.

Party of Communists in Hungary (KMP) Communism 1905–1942 ✕ Executed

Underground Communist leader who organised anti-war demonstrations through the Independence Committee and was executed in 1942

Born in Kassa (Košice), he joined the labour movement as a university student in Prague. After the First Vienna Award of November 1938 he went underground and worked in Hungary, linking up with the Communist Party’s representative. From December 1940 he organised the party’s anti-war struggle and led the Independence Committee, which staged the demonstrations of 6 October and 1 November 1941. He prepared the Christmas 1941 issue of Népszava and wrote the editorial of the first issue of the underground Szabad Nép on 1 February 1942. Arrested on 6 July 1942, he was sentenced to death by the special court of the Chief of the General Staff and executed on 9 October.

Party of Communists in Hungary (KMP) Communism 1906–1942 ✕ Died in custody

Communist who was the first editor of the underground Szabad Nép and died in custody after his arrest in 1942

Born in Budapest, he studied civil engineering in Karlsruhe and Dresden, where he led the socialist students’ association and wrote warnings against the Nazis. Back in Hungary in 1931, he was drawn by his brother Richárd into the underground Communist movement and in 1935 joined the leadership of the Communist Youth League. From 1938 he built Communist cells inside the Social Democratic Party and the trade unions, and after June 1941 he went underground as a leader of the “independence movement”. Editor-in-chief of Szabad Nép from February 1942, he was arrested on 1 June and died two weeks later in unclear circumstances.

Hungary 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.