Unity Party (Hungary)
통일당 (헝가리)
The ruling party of the Kingdom of Hungary formed in February 1922, when Prime Minister István Bethlen merged the governing Christian National Union Party with the Smallholders' Party. Initially a conservative agrarian party, under Bethlen it became a government party centred on large landowners and conservatives and won every election of the 1920s. After Gyula Gömbös became prime minister in 1932 it was renamed the Party of National Unity, and in 1939 it became the Party of Hungarian Life.
In depth
The Unity Party was one of the measures taken by Prime Minister István Bethlen to consolidate Hungary after the turmoil that followed the First World War (the Aster Revolution, the Soviet Republic, the Trianon shock and Charles IV's restoration attempts). Bethlen's Christian National Union Party had been badly weakened by 1922 because most of its members had backed Charles IV's attempts to return. According to the Hungarian-language source, the two most successful parties of the 1920 election, the Smallholders' Party and the governing Christian National Union Party, merged on 2 February 1922 under the name Christian Farmers', Smallholders' and Civic Party; the Russian-language source dates the founding to 1921. The Smallholder leader István Nagyatádi Szabó became nominal chairman, but the party's direction was set by Bethlen as prime minister.
According to the German-language source, the party won 143 of 245 seats in 1922, 170 in 1926 and 158 in 1931; the Hungarian-language source says that in 1926 it won a two-thirds majority on its own. This dominance rested not only on social support but on a restricted franchise and open voting in many rural constituencies. The party contained a smallholder democratic group, conservative politicians and a radical nationalist wing around Gyula Gömbös. Gömbös, Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky and others left in 1923 to form the Hungarian National Independence Party, known as the Race Protection Party, though Gömbös rejoined in 1928; one source dates his departure to 1924. After Nagyatádi Szabó's death in 1924 the smallholder wing lost influence, and the party's centre of gravity shifted to the conservative and large-landowner forces around Bethlen.
Smallholders opposed to Bethlen's course left on 12 October 1930 to found the Independent Smallholders' Party. As the Great Depression worsened the political situation, Bethlen resigned as prime minister on 24 August 1931, and the succeeding government of Gyula Károlyi could not master the crisis either. Gömbös, who won the struggle within the party, became prime minister in October 1932, and the party was renamed the Party of National Unity that month; the Hungarian- and Russian-language sources date the renaming to 27 October, the German-language source to 17 October.
Under the names Party of National Unity (1932–1939) and Party of Hungarian Life (1939–1945) the same party remained the government party throughout the Horthy era. The German- and English-language sources treat 1922–1944 as the history of a single ruling party.