Imre Nagy

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Imre Nagy (June 7, 1896 – June 16 1958) was a Hungarian politician, who was Prime Minister of Hungary on two occasions.

[edit] Biography

Nagy (pronounced "nodj"), IPA: [nɒɟ]) was born in Kaposvár, to a peasant family and was apprenticed to a locksmith, before enlisting in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I and serving on the Eastern Front. He was taken prisoner in 1915. He then became a member of the Russian Communist Party, and joined the Red Army. In 1918, he became a member of the detachment that guarded the imprisoned ex-emperor Nicholas II and his family in Yekaterinburg. According to documents of the Revolutionary Staff of the Ural District of the Cheka, he was member of the execution squad that murdered them on July 17, 1918[4], but some historians believe this to be an apocryphal story concocted by Soviet intelligence after his split with Moscow in 1956.

Nagy returned to Hungary after World War I and served in the short-lived Bolshevik government of Bela Kun. In 1929, he went to the Soviet Union, where he engaged in agricultural research, and also worked in the Hungarian section of the Comintern.

During the time Nagy spent in the Soviet Union, many non-Russian communists were arrested, imprisoned and executed by the Soviet government. In particular, Béla Kun who led the Hungarian Soviet Republic disappeared in the mid 1930s. This incident spurred panic among Hungarian communist emigres, as documented in Julius Hay's Born 1900.

Imre Nagy, statue at Vértanúk tere (Martyrs' square) in Budapest.

After the war Nagy returned to Hungary and served in the Communist government, as Minister of Agriculture and in other posts.

After two years as Prime Minister (1953–1955), during which he promoted his "New Course" in Socialism, Nagy fell out of favour with the Soviet Politburo. He was deprived of his Hungarian Central Committee, Politburo and all other Party functions and on 18 April, 1955, he was sacked as Prime Minister.

Nagy became Prime Minister again, this time by popular demand, during the anti-Soviet revolution in 1956.

On 31 October, he announced Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact and, on 1 November, he appealed through the UN for the great powers, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, to recognize Hungary's status as a neutral state. (Gyorgy Litvan, The Hungarian Revolution of 1956, (Longman House: New York, 1996), 55–59). He also moved toward a multiparty political system.

Statue of Imre Nagy, facing the Parliament.

When the revolution was crushed by the Soviet invasion of Hungary, Nagy, with a few others, was given sanctuary in the Yugoslav Embassy. In spite of a written safe conduct of free passage by Kádár, on 22 November, Nagy was arrested by the Soviet forces as he was leaving the Yugoslav Embassy, and taken to Snagov, Romania. Subsequently, the Soviets returned him to Hungary, where he was secretly charged with organizing to overthrow the Hungarian people's democratic state and with treason. Nagy was secretly tried, found guilty, sentenced to death and executed by hanging in June, 1958 [1]. His trial and execution were made public only after the sentence was carried out.<ref> The Counter-revolutionary Conspiracy of Imre Nagy and his Accomplices White Book, published by the Information Bureau of the Council of Ministers of the Hungarian People's Republic (No date). </ref>

He was buried along with others in a distant corner (section 301) of the Municipal Cemetery outside Budapest.

During the time when the Communist leadership of Hungary would not mark or allow access to his true burial place, a cenotaph in his honor was erected in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. In 1989, Imre Nagy was rehabilitated and his remains reburied in the same plot after a funeral organized in part by opponents of the country's communist regime. Over 100,000 people are estimated to have attended Nagy's reinternment.

The collected writings of Nagy, most of which he wrote after his dismissal as Prime Minister in April 1955, were smuggled out of Hungary and published in the West under the title "Imre Nagy On Communism."

[edit] Books

Gyula Háy [ Hay, Julius ]. Born 1900: memoirs. Hutchinson: 1974.
Granville, Joanna. "Imre Nagy, aka "Volodya" – a dent in the martyr's halo?" Cold War International History Project Bulletin 5 (1995): 28, 34–36.
KGB Chief Kryuchkov to CC CPSU, 16 June 1989 (trans. Joanna Granville). Cold War International History Project Bulletin 5 (1995): 36 [from: TsKhSD, F. 89, Per. 45, Dok. 82.]
Heresch, Elisabeth. "Nikolaus II. Feigheit, Lüge und Verrat". F.A.Herbig Verlagsbuchhandlung, MÜnchen, 1992.
Alajos Dornbach, The Secret Trial of Imre Nagy, Greenwood Press, 1995. ISBN 0-275-94332-1
Peter Unwin, Voice in the Wilderness: Imre Nagy and the Hungarian Revolution, Little, Brown, 1991. ISBN 0-356-20316-6

[edit] References

Preceded by: Mátyás Rákosi	Prime Minister of Hungary 1953–1955	Succeeded by: András Hegedűs
Preceded by: András Hegedűs	Prime Minister of Hungary 1956	Succeeded by: János Kádár