People of the Revolution and the USSR

Hungary state institutions 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 state institutions 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 state institutions 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 state institutions 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.