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Acs=

Lajos Ács, 1922–1968

Born in Budapest, Ács entered the Economics Faculty of the Budapest Technical University, but abandoned his studies in 1943. He joined the Hungarian Communist Party in 1945, becoming a district secretary in the same year. He was made head of the Hungarian Workers’ Party (HWP) Central Committee Instructors’ Department in September 1948 and worked in the Organization Department in 1949, before being appointed first secretary of the party in Somogy County in 1950. At the Second Congress of the party in February 1951, he was elected an alternate member of the Central Committee. Ács then completed a course at the Moscow Party Academy and in September 1951, became deputy head of the Central Committee Department of Party and Mass Organizations. At the Central Committee meeting on June 26–7, 1953, he became a full Central Committee member and entered the Secretariat and the Political Committee. He was re-elected to the Secretariat at the Third Congress of HWP in 1954. He then served on the committee set up to implement the resolution on rehabilitating unjustly condemned party members, and from March 1955, on the committee dealing with the rehabilitation of the victims of show trials. From April 1955 to October 1956, he worked as ideological secretary. He was included in an HWP delegation that negotiated in Moscow in 1955. During the October 1956 visit of the Hungarian party and government delegation to Yugoslavia, Ács stood in for HWP First Secretary Ernõ Gerõ. However, he was dropped from the leading party bodies at the overnight Central Committee meeting on October 23–4, 1956, and on October 30, took refuge at the Polish Embassy. From the autumn of 1958, he served as a department head at the National Bank of Hungary. He obtained the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ candidacy degree in economics in 1961 and was promoted to deputy head of division at the bank in 1963. Ács studied in the United States on a Ford Scholarship in 1965–6. On his return, he was appointed a deputy head of division at the Ministry of Finance. His fields of study were international finances and the theory of money. On September 14, 1968, Ács committed suicide at his office.

Andropov

Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, 1914–1984

Born in Nagutskaya, Stavropol District, Andropov joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1939. He served as a Young Communist League (Komsomol) organizer and later secretary in Yaroslav and then in the newly formed Karelian Finnish Autonomous Republic. In 1951, he joined the staff of the Central Committee Secretariat in Moscow. In July 1953, he became counsellor at the Soviet Embassy in Budapest, where he went on to serve as ambassador from July 1954 to March 1957, playing an important part in the Hungarian-Soviet negotiations during the 1956 Revolution. After his return to Moscow, Andropov headed the CPSU Central Committee department for Eastern European affairs. He joined the Central Committee in 1961. In 1967, he was appointed head of the State Security Committee (KGB), for a period of office marked by persecution of political dissidents. As KGB head and a Politburo member alongside the ailing Leonid Brezhnev, Andropov successfully prepared to take over power on Brezhnev’s death on November 10, 1982, when he became general secretary of the CPSU. He also became president of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union (head of state) in June 1983. He died in office on February 9, 1984.

Apro

Antal Apró, 1913–1994

Born in Szeged, Apró was brought up in orphanages. He arrived in Makó in 1916, where he completed an elementary education. He then went to work as a house-painter in Budapest. He became a member of the Mémosz building trades union in 1930 and of the Hungarian Communist Party in 1931. In 1935, he was among the organizers of a building-workers’ strike and active in the United Trade-Union Opposition a communist front organization. He was elected to the national board of Mémosz in 1938. Apró was arrested and interned <internment> several times for his illegal activity. In September 1944, he joined the Central Committee of the Peace Party [?&, as the underground communist party had been called since August 1943], in charge of obtaining the weapons required for resistance to the German occupation. On January 22, 1945, Apró became head of the trade-union department at the Hungarian Communist Party, moving to head the Mass Organizations and Mass Labour Department in February and the newly formed Trade-Union Committee of the Central Committee on April 13, 1945. Apró was elected an alternate member of the party Central Committee in May 1946 and later a full member, joining the executive Organizing Committee of the party in October. In 1948, he was a member of the Joint Organizing Committee of the Hungarian Communist Party and the Hungarian Social Democratic Party. Meanwhile in 1945, he had been elected to Parliament. Apró was dropped from the highest level of party leadership between 1948 and 1951, but elected general secretary of the Trade-Union Council. He was criticized by Rákosi and Gerõ in this period for ‘syndicalism’ (the ideological error of emphasizing the role of the trade-union movement at the expense of the communist party’s absolute authority). From August 1949 to early January 1952 and again from July to November 1953, Apró was also a member of the Presidential Council. He was appointed minister of the construction-materials industry at the beginning of 1952 and first deputy to the minister of construction in July 1953. In November of that year, he returned to the Political Committee of the Hungarian Workers’ Party (HWP) and became a deputy prime minister. Apró served on the committee implementing the resolution on rehabilitating unjustly condemned party members, and from March 1955, on the committee dealing with the rehabilitation of the victims of show trials. Until 1971, he was Hungary’s permanent representative on the council of Comecon. On June 16, 1956, he was elected chairman of the National Council of the Patriotic People’s Front. On October 6, 1956, he delivered an address at the funeral of László Rajk. He was elected a member of the Military Committee of the HWP Central Committee on the night of October 23. On October 27, he became a deputy prime minister and construction minister in the national government of Imre Nagy. The following day he joined the presidium formed to direct the party. However, he fled to the Tököl headquarters of the Soviet forces, from where he was taken to Szolnok. On November 4, he was given the industrial portfolio in the Kádár government. On November 7, he became a member of the Provisional Executive Committee of the Kádárite HSWP, heading its Economic Committee from December. Appointed a deputy prime minister again on May 9, 1957, Apró was first deputy prime minister between the end of January 1958 and September 1961. In 1961, he was placed at the head of the government’s Committee for International Relations. He was the Hungarian signatory to the agreement on building the Friendship I oil pipeline from the Soviet Union and to the documents on the nuclear-power programme. On May 12, 1971, Apró was relieved of all the posts he had held and chosen as speaker of Parliament, which he remained until December 1984. Between 1976 and 1989, he was president of the Hungarian-Soviet Friendship Society. He was dropped from the HSWP Political Committee in 1980, and at the party meeting in May 1988, from the Central Committee. On May 8, 1989, he resigned his parliamentary seat and retired from politics.

Barany

János Bárány, 1930–1959

Born in Répcelak, Vas County, Bárány was raised by his grandparents, after his mother had died in his infancy. He went to live with his father when he was seven years old. After completing the eight grades of primary school, he learnt the trade of a fitter, obtaining his trade certificate in 1948 from the Csepel Iron and Metal Works. There he worked as a toolmaker and later learnt the metal-planing trade as well. In 1951, he was conscripted into the ÁVH. While he was there, family problems led him to attempt suicide. He applied to join the party in 1954, but he was turned down despite being a Stakhanovite twice over. On October 23, 1956, he joined the demonstration while on his way home from the afternoon shift, later going to the Radio building. When the firing broke out, he went out to Csepel to fetch workers and weapons for the siege, in which he took part. On October 25, he was chosen as commander of the Tompa utca group of armed rebels, who nicknamed him Bordósipkás Jancsi (Johnny Redcap). Bárány organized the unit, brought public order to the area, and engaged Soviet military units several times. His force put up fierce resistance to the renewed Soviet offensive beginning on November 4. After the armed struggle failed, he fled to Austria with his fiancée, whom he had met during the revolution, but they were caught at the border. Returning to Csepel, he was elected onto the workers’ council at the engineering factory. At the same time, he began to organize the Revolutionary Youth Federation (Fisz), of which he became chairman. At the beginning of December, he attended the Mefesz meeting at the law building of Budapest University, where he made contact with the organization at the Central Military Hospital. Significant quantities of weapons and ammunition were collected and stored at the Csepel Youth Centre. The group also made and distributed leaflets. Bárány was arrested on April 20, 1957. The court of first instance condemned him to death on May 22, 1958 for leading a conspiracy against the state and other charges. This was confirmed by the Council of the People’s Court of the Supreme Court on February 10, 1959. He was executed on February 18.

Beria

Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria, 1899–1953

Born in Mercheuli, Georgia, Beria was head of the Soviet security service in Georgia from 1921 to 1931 and then first secretary of the Georgian Communist Party until 1938. After that, he became head of the NKVD, the Soviet political police, and one of the people primarily responsible for the Stalinist show trials. From 1938 to 1953, he was an interior and state-security people’s commissioner and then minister. He was promoted to the rank of marshal of the Soviet Union in 1945 and was a deputy prime minister between 1946 and 1953. After Stalin’s death, the new leadership under Khrushchev feared that Beria would try to seize power and inform on them about their deeds during the Stalin terror. In December 1953, he was arrested on trumped-up charges and executed.

Bata

István Bata, 1910–1982

Born at Tura, Pest County, Bata worked as a tram conductor in Budapest from 1935 to 1938. He had been a member of the Hungarian Social Democratic Party since 1930. In 1935, he became a branch secretary of the tram workers’ union, joining the national leadership in 1939. His work as a trade-union activist led to his arrest in 1942, after which he was placed under police surveillance. In 1945, he became a member of the Central Leadership of the Union of Public Employees and of the union committee at the Szépilona tram depot. A member of the Óbuda party committee, he became secretary of the 3rd District HWP Committee in 1948–9. He was then designated a worker cadre, seconded into the Hungarian People’s Army with the rank of colonel, and sent off to the Military Academy in Moscow. After completing the course, he was given command of the National Air Defences, with the rank of major general. On October 7, 1950, he was appointed chief of staff and promoted to lieutenant general. Bata was an alternate member of the HWP Central Committee from 1951 to 1953. He was appointed defence minister on July 4, 1953, after the dismissal of Mihály Farkas. In June, he was co-opted as a full Central Committee member and an alternate member of the Political Committee. Promotion to colonel general followed in 1954, and on May 14, 1955, he was a member of the Hungarian delegation that signed the Warsaw Pact. On October 23, 1956, Bata became a member of the Military Committee of the HWP Central Committee. On October 24, he oversaw the division of Budapest into three military zones and gave orders for the revolutionaries to be disarmed. He was dismissed as defence minister on October 27, when he also lost his leading functions in the party. On October 28, he was taken to the Soviet Union, where he had talks on November 2 with János Kádár, on the latter’s arrival, and took part in the expanded session of the CPSU Presidium. Under a decision taken by the Provisional Executive Committee of the HSWP on February 19, 1957, Bata was forbidden to return to Hungary for one year. He returned in September 1958 and was expelled from the party. On February 13, 1959, he was stripped of his military rank and returned to his old work place, at first as a depot manager and then as head of the Budapest Transport Enterprise Accident Prevention Department.

Brusznyai

Árpád Brusznyai, 1924–1958

Born in Derekegyháza, Csongrád County, Brusznyai obtained a degree with distinction in Ancient Greek, Latin and history in 1949, as a member of the elite Eötvös College. He obtained a doctorate in 1950 with a dissertation on the epics of Homer. He was thought to have a great future in classical philology, in which he published several papers and received appreciation from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. For a time, he worked with Gyula Moravcsik at the Institute of Classical Philology, but when his brother, a Catholic priest, was interned <internment> at Kistarcsa in 1951, Brusznyai lost his job. For a while, he taught Latin, Greek, music and choral conducting at the seminary in Vác. In 1952, he applied successfully for a teaching post at the László Lovassy Grammar School in Veszprém, where he was soon widely known and appreciated. He married in 1953 a laboratory worker at the Veszprém Chemical Research Institute and had a daughter in the following year. On October 26, 1956, Brusznyai was elected to the Veszprém County Revolutionary Council, where he was soon the leading intellectual light, becoming vice-chairman on October 31 and chairman on November 1. Meanwhile on October 28, he had led the County Revolutionary Council delegation to the nearby town of Várpalota, to learn about the events there. On November 2, the revolutionary council moved into the offices of the county council and Brusznyai went up to Budapest, where he negotiated with Lieutenant General Lorinc Kána at the Defence Ministry. The outcome of their talks was that Kána ordered the commander of the local garrison at Veszprém to release stored weapons to the national guard and provide a reliable officer to help with organizing the unit. On the following day, Brusznyai made a speech to the armed men gathered at the Jutas Barracks in Veszprém, emphasizing the need for discipline and public order. Their statement called on the government to open negotiations with the Soviet forces on a withdrawal from the country, to call democratic elections, and to continue the building of socialism in a way that considered national characteristics. On several occasions, Brusznyai used his influence to prevent violence and resolve some very tense situations peacefully. He issued a directive for the partial dissolution of the agricultural cooperatives and the return of land taken under the pretext of consolidating land holdings during collectivization. He also had the assets of Disz and the HWP frozen and transferred to the revolutionary council. He ordered a report on the ÁVH officers under arrest. He saw that hand guns were provided for the members of the revolutionary council and that the previous functionaries were disarmed. Brusznyai was arrested on April 25, 1957. The court of first instance convicted him on October 19, 1957 of conspiracy and condemned him to life imprisonment. The Special Council of the Military College of the Supreme Court, on January 7, 1958, increased the sentence to death, and he was executed two days later.

Csoori

Sándor Csoóry, b. 1930

Born in Zámoly, Fejér County, Csoóri completed his secondary education at the Pápa Reformed College and then studied for two years in the Russian Institute of the Loránd Eötvös University in Budapest. Poetry of his began to be published in 1953. He worked for the Irodalmi Újság (Literary News) in 1953–4 and the journal Új Hang (New Voice) in 1955–6. In the autumn of 1953, he was among the writers who set out to demonstrate the destructive effects that the policies of the Rákosi period had exerted on Hungary’s villages. His most celebrated poem of the period, ‘Pamphlet’, appeared in the Irodalmi Újság. On the afternoon of November 3, 1956, he took part in the students’ meeting at the History Department of the Loránd Eötvös University. Csoóri became one of the Writers’ Union’s liaisons with the Revolutionary Council of the Hungarian Intelligentsia after November 4. For a time after 1956, he lived by his writing. In 1968, he joined the film company MAFILM as a story editor. The periodical Kortárs (Contemporary) published a short documentary novel by him, Iszapesõ (Mud Shower), in 1963. Protests over this from the Soviet Embassy led to a publication ban on him for a year. In the spring of 1977, he collaborated on the samizdat volume Profil. Csoóri was also a member of the editorial committee for the volume in honour of István Bibó. Another year of silence was imposed on him after he wrote a foreword to a book by Miklós Duray in 1983. In 1988, he became chairman of the board of editors of the new journal Hitel (Credit). He was a founder member of the Hungarian Democratic Forum and later a member of its presiding committee. From 1991 to 2000, he served as president of the World Federation of Hungarians.

Dery

Tibor Déry, 1894–1977

Born in Budapest, Déry completed a commercial secondary education before going to live in Switzerland in 1911–12. He then worked from 1913 to 1918 in his uncle’s timber yard and sawmill. The first work of his to arouse interest was a novel, Lia, which appeared in the literary journal Nyugat (West) in 1917. In 1919, Déry joined the Hungarian Communist Party, becoming a member of the writers’ directorate during the 133-day Hungarian Soviet Republic. He went into exile in Vienna, where he joined the staff of the Bécsi Magyar Újság (Viennese Hungarian News), as well as working for the Vienna papers Ma (Today) and Sturm. In 1924, he moved to Paris, where he worked as a shop assistant, a stamp dealer and a language teacher, but returned to Hungary via Italy in 1926. He published in the journal Dokumentum. Between 1929 and 1935, he lived in several European countries. Returning home, he joined György Vértes in edited the legal communist journal Gondolat (Thought). However, he was sentenced to two months’ imprisonment in 1938 for his translation of André Gide’s diary of a visit to Russia. In 1939, he travelled to Romania, continuing to translate under a pseudonym. He was in hiding and engaged in illegal activity in 1940 and 1941. After 1945, a succession of his works appeared, and in 1947, he became one of the editors of the journal Csillag (Star). He received the Kossuth Prize (Hungary’s highest arts award) in 1948, but in the early 1950s, he came under mounting official criticism for his ‘improper’ representations of the working class and for retaining ‘remnants of bourgeois morals’. There was a celebrated debate in 1952 between Déry and advocates of the official line on literature. In 1954, he came out in support of Imre Nagy’s efforts at reform, welcoming the new prime minister’s policy in an open letter in October. Déry had a hand in the intellectuals’ memorandum of the autumn of 1955 and protested against the damaging effects of Stalinist cultural policies. He was among those castigated in the party’s December 1955 resolution on literature and was disciplined by the party. On June 27, 1956, he argued before the Petõfi Circle, in the debate on the press and information, that publicity should be expanded, and for this he was expelled from the party. The Writers’ Union, at its general assembly in September 1956, elected Déry a member of its presiding committee. When the revolution broke out, Déry persuaded Nagy to abolish the system of summary justice and recognize the demands of the rebels. He and his writer colleagues urged moderation and observance of the law. He represented the Writers’ Union in the Revolutionary Committee of the Hungarian Intelligentsia and took part in workers’ council meetings. On November 2, the Irodalmi Újság (Literary Gazette) published his piece ‘My Friends...’, in which he welcome the revolution, but felt responsible for the deaths of its victims and warned against acts of spontaneous justice. On November 10, he and fellow writers Zoltán Zelk, Gyula Illyés, László Benjámin and István Örkény requested asylum at the Polish Embassy in Budapest. However, they were offered only temporary refuge and left the building after a few hours. Déry became a member of the Revolutionary Council of the Hungarian Intelligentsia. On November 15, he spoke at the Magdolna utca headquarters of the Ironworkers’ Union, expressing approval of the formation of workers’ self-defence militias before an audience of workers’ council delegates. On the same day, he read to the meeting of the Greater Budapest Central Workers’ Council the Petõfi Party motion drawn up by Ferenc Farkas, calling for the establishment of a National Governing Council. With his writer colleagues, he called for the return of the Hungarian prisoners deported to the Soviet Union. Déry was arrested in April 1957. After being tried with several associates, he was sentenced on November 13, 1957 by the Supreme Court to nine years’ imprisonment. He was freed under the 1960 amnesty, but prohibited from publishing his work until 1962. The cultural authorities were prepared to lift the ban only if he wrote a work of self-criticism. This he duly did in a short story, ‘Statement of Account’, which he included in the first volume of his work to appear after his release. Several more novels and volumes of studies by him appeared in the 1960s and 1970s. His memoirs were published in 1958.

Deveseri

Gábor Deveseri, 1917–1971

Born in Budapest, Devecseri’s first volume, written jointly with Gábor Karinthy, appeared when he was 15. After completing his secondary education in 1934, he worked in an office for a year before enrolling at the Péter Pázmány University in Budapest, studying Greek and Latin. At this time he was publishing poetry in the influential journal Nyugati (West). He graduated in 1939 and received a doctorate in 1941. He then worked as a librarian until 1945. After the war, he taught literature in the Greek faculty of his old university and art history at the College of Drama. From 1948 to 1954, he also taught literature at the Officers’ Academy of the Hungarian People’s Army, with the rank of major. Devecseri was general secretary of the Writers’ Union from 1949 to 1951. He received the prestigious Kossuth Prize in 1953. On October 27, 1956, he issued a statement of support for the revolution, criticizing the government and blaming it for the protracted fighting. On October 30, he took part in the meeting of the Budapest 11th District Workers’ Council, where he read out one of his poems. His works also featured in radio literary programmes during the revolution. On November 2, he took part in the general assembly of the Writers’ Union, where he dissociated himself from the HSWP, which had been formed on the previous day. After 1956, he lived by his writings. He died in Budapest in 1971.

Donath

Ferenc Donáth, 1913–1986

Born the son of a lawyer at Jászárokszállás, Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok County, Donáth entered Budapest University in 1930 to study law. He joined the illegal communist student movement there two years later. By 1934, he was one of the organizers of the movement to reform the system of university fees and joined the Hungarian Communist Party, where he started doing regular illegal party work. He was present in 1936 at the communist-dominated event known as the Debrecen Diet and helped to organize the March Front, which was intended to unite the left wing against fascism. He also came into direct contact with the Foreign Committee of the party. In 1939, he took part in a meeting at Makó that announced the formation of the National Peasant Party. Donáth was arrested in the spring of 1940. After his release, he was called up in the autumn of the same year for labour service, but demobilized in the spring of 1942 with haemorrhage of the lungs. Donáth played an important part in reorganizing the illegal communist party in the early 1940s, joining the leadership of the Peace Party, as it became called after August 1943, and later the Hungarian Communist Party. Early in 1945, he was on the staff of the journal Szabadság (Freedom). In February of that year, he joined a committee headed by Imre Nagy preparing for land reform, which he later directed as the vice-president of the National Landholding Settlement Council. Donáth was political state secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture from 1945 to 1948. In January 1948, he became head of the Secretariat of the HWP Central Committee. He was arrested on February 15, 1951, and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment, but freed again in July 1954. He did not return to politics at that juncture and only became active in public life again in the late spring of 1956, as deputy director of the Institute of Economic Sciences. He was present at the celebrations for the 60th birthday of Imre Nagy and spoke in the economic-policy debate at the Petofi Circle on May 9 and 22. Donáth was an eye-witness to the mass demonstrations on the afternoon of October 23, 1956. That night he was elected a secretary of the HWP Central Committee in his absence, but he resigned the next day, because he did not agree with the way the events were summarily dismissed as a counter-revolution. He and Géza Losonczy had a big hand in persuading Imre Nagy, after several days’ hesitation, to interpret them as a revolution instead [?&, in other words as a progressive, positive development]. On October 28, Donáth joined in the talks to promote the consolidation process. On November 1, he became an Executive Committee member of the HSWP, which replaced the HWP as the communist party. On November 4, Nagy and Donáth worded the communiqué condemning the Soviet attack, before taking refuge in the Yugoslav Embassy. Donáth was among those taken to Snagov, Romania, at the end of November, and in June 1958, as one of the accused in Imre Nagy trial, he was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment. He was released under an individual reprieve in April 1960, but spent the next decade aloof from public life, concentrating his attention on aspects of agricultural history and agricultural economics. Towards the end of the 1970s, he became a leading figure in the incipient political opposition. He was among the first to sign the statement of solidarity with the imprisoned members of the Czechoslovak Charter 77 civil-rights movement. He accepted the chairmanship of the committee editing the Bibó festschrift and supported the efforts to gain an independent press. Donáth was an essential figure in establishing dialogue among the opposition groups of various intellectual and political persuasions, and in organizing the Monor Meeting of 1985.

Mihály Farkas, 1904–1965

Born in Abaújszántó (Abaúj-Torna, now Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County), Farkas completed higher elementary school and trained as a printing-press mechanic. In 1919, he became secretary of the Young Workers’ Group in Kassa (Košice), and in 1921, a member of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. His political activity led to a six-and-a-half-year prison sentence in 1925. After his release, he was a delegate to the Communist International of Young Workers [?& the youth wing of Comintern), which then sent him to work in Western Europe from 1932 to 1935. In 1936–7, he fought in the Spanish Civil War, after which he became second secretary of the Communist International of Young Workers in Moscow. In 1941, he was transferred, at the request of Mátyás Rákosi, to the Hungarian party, whose Foreign Committee he joined after the dissolution of Comintern. During the Second World War, Farkas served on the front and did propaganda work in the army. On November 5, 1944, he arrived in Szeged, where he joined Ernõ Gerõ, József Révai and Imre Nagy in setting up the Central Committee of the Hungarian Communist Party. Farkas was made responsible for the trade unions, young affairs and mass organizations, and later party finances and military and special-forces affairs. He became a member of the Provisional National Assembly in December 1944. In April 1945, he was appointed editor-in-chief of the journal Pártmunka (Party Work, later known as Pártmunkás—Party Worker—and Pártépítés—Party-Building). He became a member of the Secretariat of the Hungarian Communist Party Central Committee on May 11, 1945 and soon entered the Political Committee as well. From July 15 to November 23, 1945, he served as political state secretary at the Interior Ministry. In November of the same year, he was chosen as deputy general secretary of his party. From December 1945, he oversaw the Central Committee departments for party organization, cadres, mass organizations, finance and information. From September 1946, he headed the party Organization Committee and chaired the Military Committee of the Central Committee. In September 1947, Farkas took party in the meeting that established Cominform. At the end of that year, he was put in charge of Central Committee departments for party organization, agitation, finance, police and army and information, along with the Women’s, Youth and Sports committees. As the fusion with the Social Democratic Party approached, Farkas became a member of the joint Political Committee and Organization Committee. He was appointed minister of defence on September 9, 1948, and in that capacity directed a forced pace of development of the army. After the arrest of László Rajk, Farkas, Rákosi and Gerõ set up the secret State Security Committee. Farkas headed the HWP Political Committee investigations of János Kádár and Gyula Kállai in 1951 and Gábor Péter in 1953. In June and July 1953, he was removed from all his positions, but regained membership of the Political Committee and the Secretariat in August. In 1954, he was placed in charge of the Scientific and Cultural and the Administrative departments of the Central Committee and given operative supervision over the central party daily, Szabad Nép (Free People). He soon turned against Imre Nagy as well, which left him completely isolated. The April 1955 meeting of the Central Committee did not elect him to the Secretariat or the Political Committee, and for a while, he was sent to military academy in the Soviet Union. In March 1956, the Central Committee of the HWP launched an investigation into Farkas. In June, he was excluded from the party for his role in illegal activities and demoted from army general to the ranks. Miklós Gimes, writing in the new paper Hétfõi Hírlap (Monday News), called in the name of public opinion for a public trial and punishment of Farkas. On October 6, the HWP Political Committee decided to have him arrested, which was done on October 12. After October 23, the false rumour spread around Budapest that Farkas had been murdered by ÁVH men afraid of what he might say about others when brought to trial. In 1957, he was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment, but he received an individual pardon on April 5, 1960 and was released. He then worked [?& until his death] for the publisher Gondolat, as a foreign-language reader for the social sciences.

Foldes

Gábor Földes, 1923–1958

Born in Budapest, Földes went to drama college. He worked first as a director and actor at the People’s Army Theatre and then as director in chief at the Kisfaludy Theatre in Gyõr. Meanwhile he had joined the Hungarian Communist Party in 1945 and remained a member of the HWP after the fusion with the Social Democrats in 1948. In 1953, Földes joined the group supporting Imre Nagy and the New Course, to which he adhered even after Nagy had been dismissed as prime minister. He took part in several of the Petofi Circle debates in the 1956 and attended the funeral of László Rajk on October 6. Földes and his associates founded a similar Petofi Circle in Gyõr on October 23, of which he became the chairman. On October 25, 1956, there was a demonstration in Gyõr, and at Földes’s suggestion, this was joined by several people from the theatre, singing the Nékosz anthem and bearing slogans criticizing the party’s mistakes. Földes made a speech in support of Nagy and his policy, calling for Hungary’s sovereignty to be restored. After shots had been fired on the crowd outside the county museum, Földes did his utmost to prevent further bloodshed. On October 26, he took part in establishing the Gyõr National Council, assuming the chair of the constituent council of the intelligentsia. In the afternoon, Attila Szigethy sent him to restore order and prevent further violence in Mosonmagyaróvár. While Földes negotiated with the soldiers there, the crowd burst through the gates into the barracks and several attempts by him to obtain reinforcements were fruitless. He arrested the political deputy of the commanding officer, whom he handed over to the national council at the town hall. He sent two other officers by car to Gyõr, at their request. On October 27, Földes was given political supervision over the Gyõr radio broadcasts. In the afternoon, he spoke at the national council meeting, opposing the idea of setting up a counter-government in Transdanubia and emphasizing the importance of rallying the democratic forces behind Imre Nagy. On October 28, an extremist demonstration prompted Attila Szigethy to dismiss Földes temporarily, but he returned to politics on November 3 and wrote articles for the newspaper Hazánk (Our Country). Afterwards, Földes tried to keep the spirit of 1956 alive through theatre and other performances. For instance, the first new production by the Gyõr theatre was Bánk bán, a patriotic 19th-century tragedy. On May 3, 1957, he was arrested. The court of first instance sentenced him to death on June 10, 1957 after convicting him of leading a conspiracy and of murder. On December 21, 1957, the Special Council of the Military College of the Supreme Court acquitted him of murder but upheld the death sentence. His appeal for clemency was rejected by the Presidential Council and he was executed on January 15, 1958.

Foldvari

Rudolf Földvári, b. 1921

Földvári was born Rudolf Frank into a working-class family in Kispest (now the 19th District of Budapest). His father, a carpenter and woodcarver, found refuge from unemployment in 1925–7 in Turkey, where his family followed him. After finishing upper elementary school, he became an errand boy and semi-skilled worker. In 1940, he received a Chamber of Commerce medal on completing his apprenticeship as a fitter and went to work as a quality controller and then a deputy foreman at the Hofherr factory. Already as a trainee, he had become involved in trade unionism, as the apprentices’ shop steward and treasurer for the workers’ aid fund. He joined the army in 1942. He was taken a prisoner of war at Christmas 1944 and released in the autumn of 1945. In the same year, he joined the Hungarian Communist Party, serving as assistant secretary of his works branch. At the end of 1946, he was seconded to be a propagandist to the district party committee. In 1948, he was appointed head of the propaganda department at the central trade-union federation Szot. His name is associated with introducing the Outstanding Worker medal and organizing the Stalinist Work Competition of 1949. After graduating from the party college in 1951, he became deputy head of the Cadre Department of the HWP Central Committee. At this point, he Hungarianized his name from Frank to Földvári. From 1952 to 1954, he was first secretary of the HWP Budapest Committee and a member of the Central Committee and Political Committee, as well as the Budapest Council. He was a member of Parliament from 1953 to 1957. In March 1953, he was a member, with Mátyás Rákosi and Árpád Házi, of the Hungarian delegation to Stalin’s funeral. On June 13–16, he took part in Moscow in the discussions between Soviet and Hungarian party delegations, at which the Soviet leaders levelled severe criticisms of Hungarian policy. On his return, Földvári briefed Budapest party leaders on the events, and himself criticized the work of Rákosi and the Political Committee. He agreed with Imre Nagy’s government programme and began to work to implement it. This earned him many criticisms from the top party leaders. At the Budapest party meeting of May 1954, which preceded the 3rd Congress of the HWP, several delegates voted against Rákosi. Földvári, as chairman of the scrutineers committee, gave orders that the number of votes against congress delegates should also be published. After that, he was dropped from the Political Committee and posted to the provinces. From 1954 to 1956, he was first secretary of the Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County party committee. On October 24, he supported the demands of the workers at the Dimávag engineering factory in Miskolc and the formation of a workers’ council there. On October 25 and again on November 1, he led workers’ delegation to the government. On October 29, he became a member of the Borsod County Workers’ Council. On November 5, the Soviets deported Földvári to Ungvár (Uzhgorod, now Uzhkhorod) in the Ukraine, from where he returned on November 17. He was then chairman of the county workers’ council until mid-December, and then chairman of the county council until March 1957. He then left Miskolc and took a job as a fitter at the Red Star Tractor Factory in Kispest. On March 15, 1957, he was excluded from the HSWP, and in May he was arrested. On July 18, 1958, the Supreme Court sentenced him to life imprisonment, in what was known as the Borsod County Workers’ Council trial. He was reprieved in 1961. From then until his retirement in 1981, he worked at the Red Star Tractor Factory as a fitter and later as a foreman. In 1990, he initiated the foundation of the Borsod ’56 Workers’ Council Members’ Friendly Society. From 1992 to 1997, he served as chairman of the Imre Nagy Society.

==Fur++

Lajos Für, b. 1930

Born into a family of farm labourers at Egyházasrádóc (Vas County), Für attended the Csurgó Reformed Church Grammar School. In 1950, he continued his studies at the Lajos Kossuth University in Debrecen, obtaining a history degree in 1954. He then became an assistant lecturer in history there. Für joined the HWP and remained a member until 1956. In the spring of that year, he became secretary of the Kossuth Circle in Debrecen, which followed the pattern of the Petõfi Circle in Budapest. As a follower of the developing movement for political reform, Für was one of the initiators and leaders of the movement among university students, becoming secretary to the presiding committee of the DSZFB. On October 31, Für led the delegation from Debrecen that had talks with Géza Losonczy in Budapest. On November 4, the Soviet forces arrested him along with members of the city’s revolutionary committee and he was not freed until the end of November. In February 1957, he escaped to Austria as the prospect of reprisals against him loomed and soon arrived in France. He returned in May 1957, taking advantage of the amnesty offered to returning defectors by the Hungarian government. He was interrogated several times during 1957 and 1958, but no charges were brought against him. From 1957 to 1961, he worked as a casual labourer, a manual worker and a librarian. From 1961 to 1964, he taught in primary schools in Dabas and Pestújhely (15th District). He then worked as a researcher at the Hungarian Agricultural Museum from 1964 to 1987. He obtained a doctorate in 1958, a Hungarian Academy of Sciences candidacy degree in 1971, and an Academy doctorate in 1983. From the end of the 1970s onwards, he taught at teachers’ training college, first in Nyíregyháza and later in Eger, where he was appointed a senior lecturer in 1987 and a professor in 1990. From the 1960s onwards, Für was an organizer of an intellectual circle that placed national (and minority) problems at the centre of its scholarly and political activity. By the early 1980s, he was a leading figure in what came to be known as the popular opposition group. He helped to prepare for and organize the Monor Meeting of 1987. He attended the illegal conference on the 1956 revolution held at the flat of István Eörsi in December 1986. In 1987–8, Für became a founder member of the Hungarian Democratic Forum, in which he held various offices. He was the Forum’s candidate for president of the republic in 1989. He entered Parliament as a Forum member in 1990 and served in the Antall and Boross governments as defence minister until 1994. From 1996 to 1998, he sat as an independent.

Gero

Ernõ Gerõ, 1898–1980

Gero was born into a shopkeeping family in Terbegec (Trebušovce, now in Slovakia), where his father was also a tenant farmer. After secondary school, he obtained a place in 1916 at the Budapest Medical University, but never completed his studies. In 1918, he became a member of the Communist Party of Hungary. During the First World War, he worked at the Federation of Socialist Young Workers, and during the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, at the Federation of Communist Young Workers. Although he volunteered for the Red Army, he was not sent to the front. After the defeat of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, Gerõ fled to Vienna and became involved in the Landler faction of the emigré Hungarian communist movement. Initially, he worked in the offices of the Communist Youth Federation. Later he was involved in establishing Slovak and Romanian young workers’ federation. In 1922, he was sent back to Hungary to direct communist recruitment at home. He was soon arrested by the Hungarian authorities, receiving a 15-year prison sentence in May 1923. However, he was sent to the Soviet Union in the following year, under an exchange of prisoners. There he worked in a factory to start with, but in 1925, he was sent to France to direct the activity of emigré Hungarian communists there. Returning to Moscow three years later, he attended the International Lenin School, and in 1929, took over leadership of its Hungarian and French section. In 1931, Gerõ joined the Executive Committee of Comintern and did party work in France, Belgium, Spain and Portugal. He then took part in the Spanish Civil War as a Comintern instructor, and from 1939 to 1941, represented the Hungarian Communist Party in Comintern, while also editing a party journal. After Comintern was dissolved, Gerõ came under the control of the Red Army, directing agitation and propaganda in the enemy armed forces and among prisoners of war. In November 1944, he talk part in the talks in Moscow with the Hungarian ceasefire delegation. He then returned to Hungary, where he was elected a member of the National High Council in December 1944. He was the top man in the communist party until the return of Mátyás Rákosi in February 1945, a member of the Central Committee and Political Committee, and from the end of 1945, head of the party’s ministry and state policy department. In May 1945, he became minister of trade and transport, and on November 15, 1945, minister of transport. He became a member of the joint Political Committee of the Communist and the Social Democratic parties in 1948 and served on the organizing committee for the fusion. At the first congress of the HWP, Gerõ became a member of the Secretariat, and at the Central Committee meeting in November 1948, he was chosen as assistant general secretary. A month later, he was appointed finance minister, while remaining transport minister until February 1949. In June 1949, he became president of the National Economic Council. He was elected an honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1949. On November 15, 1952, he was appointed a deputy prime minister. After the June 1953 talks in Moscow, Gerõ was dismissed as assistant general secretary of the HWP, but remained a member of the Political Committee. He then served as deputy prime minister and interior minister in the first Imre Nagy government, until July 1954. In May 1954, he became a member of the committee dealing with rehabilitation of victims of show trials. At the end of July 1954, the Economic Policy Committee of the Central Committee was established with Gerõ as chairman, and became a political base for attacks on the economic aims of Nagy’s economic aims. The July 1956 plenary of the HWP replaced Rákosi with Gerõ as general secretary. Gerõ left for Yugoslavia on October 15, 1956, at the head of a party delegation, and only returned to Budapest on the evening of October 23. That night he made a speech on the radio and appealed to Khrushchev on the telephone for Soviet troops to intervene. His radio statement, while emphasizing his patriotism, spoke in vague terms of chauvinists, anti-Semites and reactionaries, and contributed greatly to the spread of the uprising. On the proposal of Mikoyan and Suslov, who had arrived from the Soviet Union, Gerõ was dismissed from his post as first secretary at the HWP Central Committee meeting on October 25, 1956 and recalled from all his other posts. On October 28, he was taken to Moscow with his family. The Provisional Executive Committee of the HSWP passed a resolution in February 1957 ruling that Gerõ could not return to Hungary for five years. In the event, he returned early in 1961. The HSWP Central Committee held him responsible for illegalities, during the period of the cult of personality, and excluded him from the party in 1962. An application to rejoin the HSWP in 1977 was rejected.

Gimes

Miklós Gimes, 1917–1958

The parents of Budapest-born Gimes were psychiatrists and he studied medicine in Szeged, but never qualified. He earned his living by casual intellectual work until the war, when he was called up for labour service. He deserted in the summer of 1944 and joined Tito>’s army in Yugoslavia. Returning to Budapest in January 1945, he joined the Hungarian Communist Party and the staff of its central daily paper, Szabad Nép (Free People). After 1953, he became an adherent of Imre Nagy’s reforms. For that reason, he was moved to the less important daily Magyar Nemzet (Hungarian Nation) after Nagy’s removal in 1955. At a party meeting in May 1955, Gimes called for the fabricated trials of László Rajk and others to be reopened. For this, he was expelled from the party and dismissed from his job. He then worked as a librarian and a publisher’s reader. Gimes became a leading figure in Nagy’s circle, with more radical and democratic political views than most of his associates. He returned to work at Szabad Nép on the day before the 1956 revolution broke out. During the revolution, he and his friends founded a daily paper called Magyar Szabadság (Hungarian Freedom). After November 4, he became a leading figure in the intellectual resistance, editing the illegal paper Október Huszonhatodika (October 26) and founding the Hungarian Democratic Independence Movement. He was arrested by the Soviets on December 5, 1956. He was convicted of initiating and heading a conspiracy in the trial of Imre Nagy and associates, before the Council of the People’s Court of the Supreme Court, chaired by Ferenc Vida, with no room for appeal. His death sentence was carried out the next day.

Gyurko

Lajos Gyurkó, 1912–1979

Gyurkó, whose father was a housepainter, was born in Pécs and had five years of schooling. In 1946, he became secretary of the Gyöngyös committee of the Hungarian Communist Party and then joined the army. In 1949, he attended a six-month course for field officers, before being given command of the 1st Parachute Brigade, with the rank of lieutenant colonel. A year later he became commander of the 12th Artillery Division. In 1950, he was sent on an officer’s course, and then to the Voroshilov Military Academy in the Soviet Union, until 1954. On his return, he was appointed commander of the 9th Corps in Kecskemét. On October 24, 1956, Gyurkó announced that he would fight with full force to ensure that the White Terror which followed the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919 was not repeated. He threatened to execute soldiers who disobeyed orders. On October 25, the council of officers sent a telegram to the Central Committee assuring the party of the loyalty of the corps. In Kecskemét, 150 soldiers were sent out into the streets with orders to fire to prevent the demonstration planned for the evening. The demonstration was cancelled. On October 27, he ordered a fighter plane to strafe a crowd at Tiszakécske, singing the national anthem: 17 people were killed and 110 wounded. He also ordered low-altitude attacks by fighters on Csongrád and Kecskemét. He and his deputy joined the Soviet troops on October 31. In November 1956, Gyurkó became a member of the new Soldiers’ Council of the Hungarian People’s Army. A unit of special forces he commanded in Eger on December 11, 1956 fired on a demonstrating crowd, causing two fatalities and more than ten wounded. As chairman of the Officers’ Supervisory Committees, Gyurkó played a part in the reprisals after the revolution. His reputation was such that all the accused in the trial of the revolutionary leaders in Békéscsaba withdrew their appeals when they learnt that he would be one of the lay assessors. In 1957, he was head of the training division at the Ministry of Defence, and from 1957 until his dismissal in 1960, commander of the border guards. After that, he was appointed manager of the Pig Fattening Station at Nagytétény and then worked in a filling station.

Hegedus

András Hegedüs, b. 1922

Born in Szilsárkány (Gyõr-Moson-Sopron County) into a peasant family with a medium-sized holding, Hegedüs lost his father early. After completing his secondary education at the Evangelical Lyceum in Sopron, he entered the Electrical Engineering Factory of the Budapest Technical University in 1941. He was an activist with the communist Peace Part and a member of the Kisz Secretariat during the German occupation. In January 1945, he became provincial secretary of the newly established Madisz, and then its national organizing secretary responsible for education affairs and founding new provincial branches. Early in March 1946, he was sent on a three-month course to the party college. At the end of 1947, Hegedüs became agricultural specialist adviser to Erno Gerõ, and deputy head and later head of the HWP Central Committee’s Agricultural and Cooperative Department. In 1950, he became a member of the party Central Committee and Secretariat, and an alternate member of the steering committee. The 2nd Congress of the HWP, held in February 1951, elected him a member of the Political Committee and the steering committee of the Central Committee. He was appointed deputy minister of agriculture on November 3, 1951, and on January 5, 1952, became state minister for agriculture and forestry. He served in the first Nagy government of 1953, as first deputy prime minister and agriculture minister concurrently. On April 18, 1955, he was appointed prime minister, in which capacity he signed the Warsaw Pact on Hungary’s behalf. He was a member of the Hungarian delegation that travelled to Yugoslavia in October 1956. On October 24, 1956, he was dismissed as prime minister and appointed a deputy prime minister. On October 28, he signed an antedated official appeal from the government for Soviet intervention. On October 29, he was taken to the Soviet Union with other compromised leaders. There he worked as a senior research fellow in the Philosophy Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He studied sociology until his return to Hungary in September 1958, when he joined the staff of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Institute of Economics. In 1962, he became deputy president of the Central Statistical Office, and in 1963, head of the new Sociology Research Group at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He was editor-in-chief of the journal Valóság (Reality) until the spring of 1965. In 1966, he began to teach at the Karl Marx University of Economics. However, he condemned the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968, was dismissed from his teaching post and went to work at the Industrial Economics Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 1973, the Political Committee of the HSWP passed a resolution ‘on the anti-Marxist views of certain social scientists’. In May of that year, he was charged with revisionism in the so-called philosophers’ trial, excluded from the party and dismissed from his job. He worked as an economic adviser until his retirement in 1975. From 1975 to 1990, he toured the world giving lectures, which aroused great interest due to his past. In these, he attempted to draw world attention to the Eastern European sphere through scholarly and political criticism of socialism. In 1979, he signed the statement of solidarity with the imprisoned members of the Czechoslovak civil-rights movement Charta 77. In December 1986, he took part in the illegal conference on the 1956 revolution held at István Eörsi’s flat, and in December 1988, he gave a lecture at the first legal and public conference on 1956, held at the István Széchenyi Specialist College and Social Sciences Club.

Kadar

János Kádár, 1912–1989

Kádár was born János Csermanek in Fiume (Rijeka). His mother, a domestic servant, was dismissed after the birth of her child. She then gave the baby to foster parents in Kapoly, Somogy County, who moved to Budapest in 1918. There Csermanek completed elementary and middle school, after which he became an apprentice typewriter mechanic. On completing his apprenticeship in 1930, he was employed in the same workshop for several months as an assistant. At the age of 17, he was already a member of the youth group of the Ironworkers’ Trade Union, and in 1931, he joined the illegal Hungarian Association of Young Communist Workers (KIMSZ) and the Hungarian Communist Party. His alias in the communist movement at this time was János Barna. Arrested in November 1931, he was released for want of evidence, but kept under police surveillance. In 1933, he became secretary of the KIMSZ Central Committee, whereupon he was arrested again and sentenced in October to two years’ imprisonment for communist organization work. However, at the end of that year, he was expelled from KIMSZ, on grounds of his behaviour before the police. During his years in prison, he made the acquaintance of several communists, among them Mátyás Rákosi. On his release, Csermanek had several labouring jobs and became active in the Social Democratic Party, where he soon became a member of the Budapest 6th District branch. In 1940, he was appointed head of the Youth Group of the Social Democratic Party Central Committee. In the spring of 1941, he became a member of the Budapest Area Committee of the Hungarian Communist Party, whose Central Committee he joined in May 1942. In December that year he was appointed a Central Committee secretary, and in February 1943, its leading secretary. At that point, he received the new cover name János Kádár in the communist movement. After the dissolution of the COMINTERN in 1943, the Hungarian Communist Party was also dissolved and then reorganized as the Peace Party. In April 1944, Kádár was sent by the Peace Party to Yugoslavia, where he was to make contact with communist leaders in exile, but he was arrested at the Hungarian border. He managed to disguise his real identity and went on trial instead as an army deserter, receiving a two-year sentence of imprisonment. He escaped from prison in November 1944 and made his way back to Budapest. After the 1944 Siege of Budapest, the ‘Budapest’ Central Committee of the Communist Party appointed him deputy to the Budapest chief of police. His position as leading secretary was taken over by Ernõ Gerõ, who arrived in Budapest in January 1945. In April, he was elected secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party Central Committee, secretary of its Budapest Area Committee, and head of the Central Committee Cadre Department. He also joined the Political Committee, formed in May 1945. In 1946, he became a deputy general secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party and then the HWP, in which capacity he remained a Political Committee and Central Committee member until his arrest in 1951. Meanwhile he had played an important role in preparing for the show trial of László Rajk, while minister of the interior between 1948 and June 1950. In May 1950, Kádár became a member of the Organizing Committee of the HWP CC and head of its Department of Party and Mass Organizations. His arrest by the ÁVH in the spring of 1951 was followed by removal from all party positions at the May meeting of the HWP Central Committee. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in December 1952 by the Supreme Court, but rehabilitated and released again in July 1954. He then became secretary of the HWP 13th District Committee, and in September 1955, first secretary of the HWP Pest County Committee. The HWP Central Committee readmitted him to membership at its July 1956 plenary meeting, where he was elected a Political Committee member and second secretary of the Central Committee. On October 25, 1956, Kádár was elected first secretary of the HWP Central Committee, and then a member of the Directory formed in place of the Political Committee on the following day. On October 28, he became chairman of the HWP Presidium. Within the Council of Ministers, he became a member of the Government Cabinet formed on October 30 and was appointed minister of state. On October 31, he became a member of the Steering Committee of the newly forming HSWP. However, on November 1, he and Ferenc Münnich went over to the Soviet side and left Hungary. They took part in meetings of the CPSU Presidium on November 2–4, where he was appointed to head an alternative government to replace that of Imre Nagy. He announced the formation of the Hungarian Revolutionary Workers’ and Peasants’ Government in a radio announcement on November 4 and was taken later that day to Szolnok by Soviet military plane. On November 7, the Soviet army escorted him to Budapest, where he was appointed chairman of the Council of Ministers (prime minister) by István Dobi, president of the Presidential Council (head of state). On February 26, 1957, Kádár was appointed chairman of the Provisional Central Committee of the HSWP, and at the national party meeting in June 1957, its first secretary and a member of the Political Committee. On January 28, 1958, he resigned as prime minister and became minister of state. However, he resumed the chairmanship of the Council of Ministers from September 13, 1961 to June 30, 1965. He remained first secretary of the HSWP Central Committee until 1985, when he became general secretary of his party until 1988. He was dropped from the Political Committee at the national party meeting in May 1988, but elected president of the HSWP. The meeting of the HSWP Central Committee in May 1989 relieved him of his Central Committee membership and position as party president on the grounds of his ill health. He died on July 6, 1989 after a lengthy illness.

Kaganovich

Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich, 1893–1991

Born near Kiev, Ukraine, Kaganovich went to work in a tannery at the age of 14. He became a member of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (communists) in 1911 and was arrested for illegal communist activity on several occasions. After the revolution of February 1917, he began to work for the party in various places, joining the party apparatus in 1922. From 1925 to 1928, he was first secretary of the party in Ukraine. From 1930 to 1934, he was on the Moscow City Party Committee and first secretary of the Moscow District Party Committee. In 1935, he became people’s commissar (minister) of roads and transport and of heavy industry, fuel and the oil industry. He was appointed to be a deputy prime minister in December 1944. Kaganovich served on the Presidium of the CPSU from 1930 to 1957. In 1956–7, he was first deputy prime minister and concurrently minister of the construction materials industry. In June 1957, he was implicated in an attempt to oust Nikita Khrushchev and expelled from the party leadership. He was then appointed manager of a chemical combine in the Urals.

Khruschev

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev ( 1894-1971)

Born in Kalinovka, Khrushchev joined the Bolshevik party in 1918 and fought in the Civil War as a Red Army political officer. In 1925, he became a district party secretary. He then worked with Kaganovich, a close associate of Stalin's. He entered the Stalin Industrial Academy in Moscow in 1929. In 1935, he was appointed first secretary of the Moscow city party and then of the Moscow district party. From 1938 to 1949, he was first secretary of the Ukraine Communist Party Central Committee, as well as being prime minister of the Ukraine from 1944 to 1947. Khrushchev was a member of the CPSU Presidium from 1939 to 1964. In 1949, he became first secretary in Moscow. In a power struggle after Stalin's death in 1953, Khrushchev gained the support of the leadership rather than Malenkov. He was first secretary of the CPSU from 1953 and 1964, as well as prime minister from 1958 to the 1964. He was suddenly removed from his party and state positions in October 1964, after which he lived in total retirement.

Kopacsi

Sándor Kopácsi ( b. 1922)

Kopácsi was born in Miskolc, where his father was a turner and a leading local Social Democratic politician. He already took part at the age of 15 in leafleting against the fascist Arrow-Cross movement and received a bullet wound in the thigh. He completed the iron-industry specialist secondary school in Miskolc and worked as a turner at the Dimavág engineering factory during the Second World War. He and his family joined the Mokán resistance movement during the German occupation of Hungary in 1944. After his native city had been liberated by Soviet forces, Kopácsi joined the new special-forces organization and the Hungarian Communist Party. In 1949, having completed police officers' training and two party courses, he began to work in the special-forces department at the party centre. In the autumn of that year, he was sent on a two-year party course and then appointed to head the party organization in the police force. In 1952, he became chief of Budapest police. After the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956, Kopácsi spoke out openly, at a police party meeting, against Mátyás Rákosi. Influenced by events during the Poznan workers' uprising, he and several others announced at a meeting of high-ranking army and police officers that they would not fire on the people. On October 31, 1956, Kopácsi was included in the executive committee of the HSWP, charged with preparing for the first congress. He won the confidence of the insurgent groups during the revolution, and on November 3, he was elected deputy commander of the national guard, at a meeting of special forces at the Kilián Barracks (9th District). His plan, at talks with Imre Nagy, was for the rebels to be disarmed after the fighting had ceased. On November 5, 1956, he was arrested by Serov. Placed on trial with Nagy and his associates, Kopácsi was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Supreme Court on June 15, 1958, but freed in the 1963 amnesty. From 1963 to 1965, he worked as a turner in the telephone factory, but then he found a job in Solymár (Pest County) as a technical officer. In 1969, he obtained permission to complete his university studies, but on receiving his law degree, he failed to find a job to match his qualifications. In 1975, he emigrated with his wife to Canada, where he worked as a waiter, a worker in a refrigerator factory, and then as a manual worker in the Toronto Electricity Works. He retired in 1987. In 1989, he returned to Hungary, where he was rehabilitated. He had his rank restored in 1990 and was then promoted to major general. He is currently chairman of the reconstituted Social Democratic Party of Hungary, which has so far failed to win seats in Parliament.

Kovacs Bela

Béla Kovács ( 1908-1959)

Born into a poor peasant family in Patacs, now part of Pécs, Kovács completed upper elementary school before attending courses in agriculture and training to be a waiter. He began farming in 1926 on four-and-a-half hectares, which he had increased to 17 hectares by the end of the Second World War. He went into local government in 1927, and in 1933, joined the Independent Smallholders' Party, becoming a local organizer. In 1939, he became the party's national deputy general secretary and a candidate for Parliament. In 1941, he was elected general secretary of the Hungarian Peasants' Association. Kovács was appointed a state secretary at the Interior Ministry in the provisional post-war government, and a couple of months later, agriculture minister. On August 20, 1945, his party elected him its general secretary. On February 23, 1946, he resigned as agriculture minister to devote himself full time to his party work . On March 13, 1946, he became editor-in-chief of the Kis Újság (Little Newspaper). He was arrested on February 25, 1947 by the Soviet authorities and sentenced without trial to 20 years' hard labour. He spent a lengthy period in Neukirchen in the Soviet zone of Austria, in 1948. From 1952 onwards, he was in several different Soviet prisons. He was returned home in the autumn of 1955 from the Mordova reception camp for political prisoners, first to Nyíregyháza and then to Jászberény. While in captivity, he learnt Russian and German. During the revolution, Kovács was elected an executive member of the revived Independent Smallholders' Party and its chairman on November 3. He served as agriculture minister in the national government of Imre Nagy from October 27 to November 3, when he was appointed state minister in the coalition government. After November 4, Kovács sought means of reaching agreement with the Kádár government, negotiating with Kádár officially. He became a member of Parliament in November 1958, representing the Patriotic People's Front, but the high blood pressure he had developed while in Soviet captivity worsened and he was unable to take his seat.

Kovacs, L.I.

László Iván Kovács, 1930–1957

Born in Debrecen to the family of a clerical worker, Iván Kovács was a student at the Sopron Military Secondary School when he and his father fled to the West in 1944. However, they returned a year later. He completed his secondary education at a commercial school in 1951 and applied unsuccessfully to study law at university. Instead he studied for one year as an evening student at the Budapest University of Economics. As a footballer, he was then employed in various administrative jobs, as a miner and as a sports trainer. In 1951, he became a civilian army employee, but was dismissed in 1953. Iván Kovács took part in the demonstration outside the Hungarian Radio building on October 23 and was a member of one of the delegations that entered the building. The same day, he obtained a rifle in Kálvin tér (5th District) and took part in the fighting in Ülloi út (8th and 9th districts) against the advancing Soviet troops. He was disarmed and detained by soldiers at the National Museum (8th District) on the following day, but released after a short time. On October 25, he joined the Corvin köz group (8th District) and took over command. He made contact with the Práter utca group (8th District), and negotiated at the party headquarters and the Defence Ministry about ceasefire conditions. On October 29, he and a delegation were received by Imre Nagy, to whom he presented the demands of the Corvin köz group: guarantees for the country’s independence, a negotiated withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungarian territory, an end to the one-party system, and creation of a national guard that included the armed insurgents. Iván Kovács took part, in late October and early November, in several negotiations on forming and organizing the national guard. On November 1, he was dismissed from his command, but on November 3, he was elected onto the committee formed to organize the national brigades. On November 4, he took part in the fighting against Soviet troops, but on the same day he was declared a traitor in Corvin köz and arrested. He managed to escape as he was escorted across to the Kilián Barracks and was in hiding at home until November 10. He then moved to his parents’ house at Alsogöd (Pest County), retaining his weapon. In February 1957, he tried to found an illegal party (the Turul Party, named after a mythical bird of the ancient Hungarians) to preserve the ideas of the revolution. He and his companions prepared leaflets, planned to free Pál Maléter, and tried to make contact with Béla Király. The group was arrested on March 12, 1957. Iván Kovács was sentenced to death by the court of first instance on August 22, 1957, on charges of leading a conspiracy. This was confirmed by the Council of the People’s Court of the Supreme Court on December 27, 1957 and he was executed on December 30.

Kuczka

Péter Kuczka ( b. 1923)

Born in Székesfehérvár, Kuczka completed secondary school in 1941 and gained a qualification as a specialist teacher of commerce in 1945. He worked for various firms as a clerk and a bookkeeper in 1941-8. Kuczka' s first book of verse appeared in 1949. He held various union and communist-party posts from 1945 to 1956, including secretary of the Writers' Union for a time. He was on the staff of the Writers' Union paper, the Irodalmi Újság (Literary Gazette). When Imre Nagy was putting together his government programme of reform in the summer of 1953, Kuczka was among the writers sent to the provinces to gather material on the situation there and the consequences of the Rákosi dictatorship. Out of this came a poem, 'Nyírségi napló' (Journal of the Nyírség District), in which Kuczka paints a staggering picture of the impoverishment and exploitation of the peasantry. The poem was criticized officially for its pessimism. Nonetheless, Kuczka was awarded the Kossuth Prize in 1954. He belonged to a group of writers and friends known as the Roundheads, on the moderate wing of the communist reform opposition. In the spring of 1955, he campaigned for the foundation of a new literary periodical, but the appearance of the first issue of Életképek (Conversation Pieces) was prevented by the outbreak of the 1956 Revolution. On September 17, 1956, he was elected to the new board of the Writers' Union, along with several other members of the party and non-party opposition, in the first secret ballot held by the organization since 1948. Kuczka spoke at the Petőfi Circle debates on the press and on economic policy. On October 23, he went to Parliament, where he joined a Writers' Union deputation calling on the government to authorize the afternoon demonstration. He became a member of the Revolutionary Committee of the Hungarian Intelligentsia (MÉFB) formed on October 28. Representing the MÉFB, he proposed the formation of a national committee, which took the name Nationwide National Committee a few days later. The plan was to build up a network of national committees <revolutionary councils and committees> after the pattern of those that formed after 1945. He was an initiator of the National Rescue organization, condemned by the HSWP as hostile propaganda on November 21. Kuczka also took part in the formation of the MÉFB's successor organization, the Revolutionary Council of the Hungarian Intelligentsia, on November 21. On December 30, the state Newspaper Publishing Enterprise (Hírlapkiadó Vállalat) suspended the authorization for Életképek to be published and dismissed Kuczka and several of his colleagues. Although he avoided arrest, Kuczka was never able to return to literature. In 1958, he went to work at the Picture Gallery Enterprise (Képcsarnok Vállalat), moving to the National Tourist Council in 1968. In 1976, he became an editor at the children's publishing enterprise Móra. From the early 1970s onwards, he was one of the apostles of science fantasy in Hungary.