Independent Hungarian Democratic Party
독립헝가리민주당
A centrist, moderately liberal Hungarian party founded on 20 July 1947 by István Balogh, a Catholic priest and state secretary in the prime minister's office, with fellow deputies who had left the Independent Smallholders. Based on the urban petty and middle bourgeoisie and intellectuals, it called for a civic democracy built on private property, and won 18 seats with 5.25 per cent in the election of 31 August 1947. Kept out of the governing coalition, it joined the Hungarian Independent People's Front on 20 February 1949 and ceased to function.
In depth
István Balogh, general secretary of the Independent Smallholders, left that party in June 1947 and the following month founded the Independent Hungarian Democratic Party with fellow former Smallholder deputies; on 30 July the National Committee allowed it to contest the election. Balogh was chairman, György Parragi executive vice-chairman and Imre Kovács, former general secretary of the National Peasant Party, vice-chairman. Mátyás Rákosi's Communists allowed it to stand in order to weaken the Smallholders.
Its programme sought a civic democracy based on private property but restricting big capital economically and politically, and rejected Soviet-type socialism. It was the only opposition party to vote for the Three-Year Plan but opposed the nationalisation of the big banks, and it urged a settlement of church–state relations and diplomatic ties with the Vatican. It did not criticise the government or the Communists but clashed repeatedly with the Social Democrats, while the right-wing Democratic People's Party and the Hungarian Independence Party refused to cooperate with it.
In the election of 31 August 1947 it won 18 seats with 5.25 per cent, but when the Communists and Social Democrats kept it out of the coalition it confined itself to parliamentary work; its paper was Magyar Nemzet. On 20 February 1949 the rest of the party joined the Hungarian Independent People's Front, and after that year's election it stopped functioning without formal dissolution. A party of the same name was revived on 5 May 1989 but won no seats and was dissolved in 2011.