Independent Smallholders' Party
독립소농당
A party founded in Békés, Hungary, on 12 October 1930 by smallholders who broke away from the Unity Party. Representing landed peasants, agricultural workers and the urban middle class, it called for land reform and democratisation. It won 57% in the November 1945 election but was broken up by the Communists' 'salami tactics' and in effect disappeared in 1949; it was revived during the 1956 revolution and again in 1988, and took part in coalition governments in 1990–1994 and 1998–2002.
In depth
Smallholders who no longer supported István Bethlen's course founded a new party at Békés on 12 October 1930, electing Bálint Szijj chairman, Zoltán Tildy vice-chairman and Ferenc Nagy national general secretary. In December it merged with the Agrarian Party, whose chairman Gaszton Gaál became its chairman, and it won 10 seats in the 1931 election. After Gaál's death Tibor Eckhardt became chairman. According to the English-language source, the party was one of the largest anti-fascist opposition parties in the 1930s and the Second World War; it opposed Hungary's participation in the war, its members giving anti-fascist speeches in parliament and leading rallies as late as 1943. In 1943 it concluded an anti-fascist agreement with the Social Democratic Party.
After Germany occupied Hungary on 19 March 1944, the interior minister dissolved the party on 28 March. Its members took part in the clandestine resistance, and Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky was arrested by the Arrow Cross in November 1944 and executed on 24 December. The party played a major role in the provisional government set up in the Soviet-occupied zone, and at this time it absorbed several other parties and became heterogeneous, with tendencies from right to left.
In the November 1945 election the party won 57% (57.03% according to the Hungarian-language source) against the Communists' 17%, but under pressure from the Allied Control Commission it had to form a grand coalition with the Communists, Social Democrats and National Peasants, and the interior ministry went to the Communists. Tildy became prime minister and, when the republic was proclaimed on 1 February 1946, president, with Ferenc Nagy succeeding him as prime minister. Under Communist pressure the party expelled 20 deputies on 12 March 1946, and on 25 February 1947 its general secretary Béla Kovács was arrested by Soviet troops and deported to the USSR. In May 1947 Nagy, who was abroad, was forced by threats to resign.
Lajos Dinnyés, more willing to accommodate the Communists, then became prime minister, and in the August 1947 election the party won only 68 seats. Tildy was forced out of the presidency in June 1948, and the pro-Communist István Dobi became party chairman and, in December 1948, prime minister. In 1949 the party was absorbed into the Communist-led Hungarian Independence People's Front. During the 1956 revolution Tildy and Kovács, back from the Soviet Union, revived the party and joined Imre Nagy's government, but after the Soviet intervention it could no longer function.
The party was re-established on 18 November 1988 and took part in the governments of József Antall and Péter Boross in 1990–1994 and of Viktor Orbán in 1998–2002. It has won no seats since the 2002 election, and liquidation proceedings against it were initiated in 2021.