People of the Revolution and the USSR

Activity(set)
Any Political and party leadership 174 Government and administration 102 Legislature and state representation 12 Monarchs and royalty 3 Military command 48 Security, intelligence and policing 26 Diplomacy and international organization 37 Economy, finance and planning 17 Industry and production 3 Agriculture and land policy 3 Ideology and propaganda 12 Social movements and organizing 52 Scholarship and theory 11 Education 2 Science and technology 1 Literature and arts 18 Religion 6 Law and justice 8
Affiliation

Most people

Any Hungary state institutions 2 Communist Party of Germany (KPD) 1 Independent Smallholders' Party (FKGP) 1

All 3 affiliations

Germany

Communist Party of Germany (KPD) 1

Hungary

Hungary state institutions 2 Independent Smallholders' Party (FKGP) 1
Position
Any Marxism and communism 2 Agrarianism and peasant parties 1
Citizenship
Any Hungary 2 East Germany 1
Background
Any Hungary 2 Germany 1
Era(set)
Any

People of the Soviet Union

The old regime and its challengers1905–1917 2 The revolutionary generation1917–1940 5 People of the Stalin era1929–1953 5 People of the thaw and the stagnation1953–1985 9 The last generation1985–1991 5

People of the Chinese revolution and the People’s Republic

People of the Mao era1949–1976 1 The reform generation1976–현재 1

People of the wider world

The revolutionary wave and the world war1917–1945 5 The Cold War and decolonization1945–현재 3
Agriculture and land policy The Cold War and decolonization 1945–현재 Clear all

Heinrich Rau

Heinrich Rau
East Germany state institutions Communism East Germany Germany 1899–1961 ○ Heart attack

Communist who chaired the German Economic Commission, the forerunner of the GDR government, and led East German economic policy

Born in Feuerbach near Stuttgart, he worked as a metal presser at Bosch and passed through the Spartacists and the USPD into the KPD in 1919, becoming the party’s leading agricultural policy maker in the 1920s. Imprisoned after the Nazis came to power, he emigrated to the Soviet Union and in the Spanish Civil War commanded the XI International Brigade. Interned in France and handed to the Gestapo by Vichy in 1942, he was liberated at Mauthausen. In March 1948 he became chairman of the German Economic Commission (DWK), which carried out the eastern currency reform and the first plans. In the GDR he was a Politburo member, deputy prime minister and chairman of the State Planning Commission; at the Politburo session of 8 July 1953 he recommended replacing Ulbricht, yet kept his posts. Minister of Machine Construction and then of Foreign Trade, he died of a heart attack in 1961.

Career timeline
  • 1919Joined the KPD
  • 1923Head of the KPD agricultural division
  • 1937–1938Commander of the XI International Brigade
  • 1943–1945Mauthausen concentration camp
  • 1948–1949Chairman of the German Economic Commission
  • 1950–1961SED Politburo member; deputy prime minister
  • 1955–1961Minister of Foreign and Inter-German Trade

Béla Kovács

Kovács Béla
Hungary state institutions Agrarianism and peasant parties Hungary Hungary 1908–1959 ○ Natural causes

The Smallholders' general secretary whose Soviet abduction triggered his party's destruction

Arrested, he declared: "I took no part in the conspiracy, I feel no guilt in it; had I done so I would have betrayed my life's work."

A peasant politician of peasant stock who, with only four years of elementary schooling, joined the Smallholders in 1933 and rose by 1945 to general secretary of post-war Hungary's largest party. As agriculture minister in the Tildy and Nagy governments he drove the break-up of the great estates and the land reform, and defended his party's independence against Rákosi's salami tactics. When parliament refused to lift his immunity in February 1947, Soviet forces arrested him on fabricated espionage charges and carried him off to the gulag, and the abduction became the trigger for Ferenc Nagy's resignation and the dismantling of the Smallholders. He returned in 1955, served as agriculture minister in Imre Nagy's revolutionary government in 1956, and after the suppression cooperated with the Kádár regime until his death in 1959.

Career timeline
  • 1933–1944Joined the Smallholders (FKGP); Baranya organiser; anti-Nazi resistance
  • 1944–1945Political state secretary of the interior in the provisional government
  • 1945–1946Minister of agriculture
  • 1945.08–1947General secretary of the Smallholders' Party
  • 1947–1955Abducted by the Soviets; 20-year sentence; gulag then Moscow prison
  • 1955–1956Handed over to Hungary; released April 1956
  • 1956.10–11Agriculture minister and state minister in Nagy's revolutionary government
  • 1957–1959Cooperated with the Kádár regime; MP in 1958

Ferenc Donáth

Donáth Ferenc
Hungary state institutions Communism Hungarian Hungarian 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.

Career timeline
  • 1934Joined the Hungarian Communist Party and worked underground
  • 1937–1939Helped organize the March Front and took part in founding the National Peasant Party
  • 1945–1948Vice-president of the National Landholding Settlement Council and political state secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture
  • 1948–1951Led sections of the Hungarian Working People’s Party Central Committee Secretariat and rural department
  • 1951–1954Sentenced to 15 years in a purge trial, then rehabilitated and released in 1954
  • 1956Reformer around Imre Nagy and member of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party provisional executive committee
  • 1958–1960Sentenced to 12 years in the Imre Nagy trial and released by individual reprieve in 1960
  • 1976–1985Cooperative research fellow and organizer of opposition dialogue and the 1985 Monor Meeting
  • 1989Posthumously rehabilitated when the Imre Nagy trial verdict was annulled