Socialist writer and Népszava journalist murdered with Béla Somogyi in 1920 for writing against the White Terror
Born in Kassa (Košice), he began as a journalist on the local Kassai Napló and published the novel A Sefcsik ház in 1918. In 1919 he joined Népszava, writing about proletarians, the peasants’ hunger for land and migration, and against the White Terror associated with the names of Iván Héjjas, Pál Prónay and Gyula Ostenburg-Moravek. For this the Ostenburg detachment abducted him and his editor Béla Somogyi on 17 February 1920 and shot them, throwing the bodies into the Danube.
Career timeline
- 1918Novel A Sefcsik ház
- 1919Joins Népszava
- 1920Murdered by the Ostenburg detachment
Reform communist journalist executed alongside Imre Nagy
In the inaugural issue of Magyar Szabadság he wrote: 'Only this way can we build a free, independent, democratic Hungary.'
A Hungarian journalist of Jewish background, born in Budapest, who joined the illegal communist movement during the war and after 1945 became a writer for the party daily Szabad Nép, initially a loyal polemicist for the Rákosi regime. Shaken by the Slánský trial and the doctors' plot in Moscow, he broke with the party line, demanding László Rajk's rehabilitation in 1955 and was expelled. During the 1956 Revolution he was the most radical figure in Imre Nagy's inner circle, founding the newspaper Magyar Szabadság; after the Soviet intervention he refused to accept the Kádár government, led an underground press and the Hungarian Democratic Independence Movement, and was arrested, tried as third defendant in the Nagy trial, and hanged with Nagy and Pál Maléter on 16 June 1958. Rehabilitated in 1989, he was solemnly reburied alongside his fellow martyrs.
Career timeline
- 1942Joined illegal communist movement; called up for labor service
- 1944Escaped labor service, joined Yugoslav partisans
- 1945–1954Journalist, Szabad Nép
- 1954Correspondent in Zurich, Vienna, Paris
- 1955Expelled from MDP for demanding Rajk's rehabilitation; translator at Corvina
- summer 1956Readmitted to MDP; joined Nagy's inner circle
- 1956.10–11Founded and edited Magyar Szabadság
- 1956.11–12Founded Hungarian Democratic Independence Movement, underground paper; arrested 5 Dec
The exile historian of workers’ councils
In the resolution he recorded for 31 October, the workers' councils opened with 'The factory is the property of the workers.'
Balázs Nagy was a Hungarian revolutionary socialist and exile writer who documented how workers’ councils created an autonomous political and economic organisation outside the state apparatus and party bureaucracy during the 1956 revolution. He left a firsthand account of the formation of the Central Workers’ Council of Greater Budapest, its strike after 4 November, and its negotiations with the new government; the study was published in French in Brussels in 1961. His work shows both how working-class self-organisation functioned as an alternative political form amid defeat and the limits imposed on it by military intervention and repression.
Career timeline
- 1956Participated in Budapest’s workers’ council movement
- 1956.11Documented the formation and resistance of the Central Workers’ Council of Greater Budapest
- 1961Published the French study La formation du Conseil Central Ouvrier de Budapest en Brussels
- 1964Published Budapest 1956: The Central Workers’ Council in International Socialism
- 2003Died
