Hungarian parliamentary election, 1945

Hungarian parliamentary election, 1945
All 409 seats in the Diet ; 205 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	92.52%
Prime Minister before election; Béla Miklós ; Military	Elected Prime Minister; Zoltán Tildy ; FKGP

Last updated April 08, 2019

Parliamentary elections were held in Hungary on 4 November 1945.^[1] They came at a turbulent moment in the country's history: World War II had had a devastating impact; the Soviet Union was occupying it, with the Hungarian Communist Party growing in numbers; a land reform that March had radically altered the property structure; and inflation was rampant. The Independent Smallholders Party won a sweeping victory, but its gains were gradually whittled away by Communist salami tactics, fulfilling the prediction of their leader Mátyás Rákosi that the defeat would "not play an important role in Communist plans".^[2]

Hungary is a country in Central Europe. Spanning 93,030 square kilometres (35,920 sq mi) in the Carpathian Basin, it borders Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Austria to the northwest, Romania to the east, Serbia to the south, Croatia to the southwest, and Slovenia to the west. With about 10 million inhabitants, Hungary is a medium-sized member state of the European Union. The official language is Hungarian, which is the most widely spoken Uralic language in the world. Hungary's capital and largest city is Budapest. Other major urban areas include Debrecen, Szeged, Miskolc, Pécs and Győr.

World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.

The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. Nominally a union of multiple national Soviet republics, its government and economy were highly centralized. The country was a one-party state, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital in its largest republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Other major urban centres were Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Alma-Ata, and Novosibirsk. It spanned over 10,000 kilometres east to west across 11 time zones, and over 7,200 kilometres north to south. It had five climate zones: tundra, taiga, steppes, desert and mountains.

Background

Elections (which had not taken place since 1939) were required by the Yalta Agreement; moreover, the revolutionary social and political changes of 1945 were effected without popular consultation, and in view of the special ties developing that year between Moscow and Budapest (an agreement on close economic cooperation and the resumption of full diplomatic relations), the Western powers urged free elections and withheld acknowledging the Provisional Government until the Soviets agreed to hold them.^[3]

The Yalta Conference, also known as the Crimea Conference and code-named the Argonaut Conference, held from 4 to 11 February 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union for the purpose of discussing Germany and Europe's postwar reorganization. The three states were represented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Premier Joseph Stalin, respectively. The conference convened near Yalta in Crimea, Soviet Union, within the Livadia, Yusupov, and Vorontsov Palaces.

The election, by secret ballot and without census or fraud, is reckoned as the first relatively democratic election ever held in Hungary, and was certainly the closest thing to an honest election held in the country until 1990.^[4] It was also one of only two remotely free elections ever held in what would become the Soviet bloc (the other being the 1946 elections in Czechoslovakia. One author states it was "generally fair, but not entirely free", as only "democratic" parties were allowed to compete, meaning most of the pre-war right-wing parties were excluded, as well as those parties that did not participate in the Hungarian National Independence Front, a wartime anti-fascist alliance.^[5] Only the leaders of the dissolved rightist parties, SS volunteers and those interned or being prosecuted by the people's courts were barred from voting. The liberal electoral law was also supported by the Communists, who were not bothered by the failure of their proposal to field a single list of candidates on the part of the Communist-Social Democrat coalition parties, which would have ensured a majority for left-wing parties: intoxicated by their recruitment successes and misjudging the effect of the land reform on their appeal, they expected an "enthralling victory" (József Révai predicted winning as much as 70%). To their bitter disappointment, the result was nearly the opposite: the Independent Smallholders Party, winning the contest in all 16 districts, won 57% of the vote, the Social Democrats won slightly above and the Communists slightly below 17%, and the National Peasant Party just 7% (the rest going to the Citizen Democrats' Party and the new Hungarian Radical Party of Oszkár Jászi's followers).^[6]

The Schutzstaffel was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It began with a small guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz made up of NSDAP volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. In 1925, Heinrich Himmler joined the unit, which had by then been reformed and given its final name. Under his direction (1929–45) it grew from a small paramilitary formation to one of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany. From 1929 until the regime's collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, surveillance, and terror within Germany and German-occupied Europe.

József Révai, Hungarian communist politician.

Of the many reasons for the success of the Smallholders and the failure of the Communists was the fact that Cardinal József Mindszenty, head of the Hungarian Catholic hierarchy, infuriated at the loss of the overwhelming majority of its property without compensation and at the clergy's being excluded from voting upon Communist initiative, condemned the "Marxist evil" in a pastoral letter and called on the faithful to support the Smallholders, who upheld traditional values.^[6] Also, in this, Hungary's first election under full universal suffrage, and its only one where men and women voted with different-coloured ballot papers, women surprised the Communists by generally backing the Smallholders; the former launched a propaganda campaign implying these women were easily deceived or ignorant.^[7] Still, the verdict of 4.8 million voters, 90% of the enfranchised, was clear in general terms: they preferred parliamentary democracy based on private property and a market economy to socialism with state economic management and planning. They hoped these preferences would prevail in spite of the presence of Soviet occupying forces, who were expected to leave once a peace treaty was signed. However, guided by the same expectation and wishing to avoid confrontation until then, the Smallholders yielded to Marshal Kliment Voroshilov (Chairman of the Allied Control Commission), who made it clear that a grand coalition in which the Communists preserved the gains already secured (that is, the Ministry of the Interior and control over the police) was the only kind of government acceptable to the Soviets.^[6]

József Mindszenty [jo:ʒɛf mindsɛnti] was the Prince Primate, Archbishop of Esztergom, cardinal, and leader of the Catholic Church in Hungary from 2 October 1945 to 18 December 1973. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, for five decades "he personified uncompromising opposition to fascism and communism in Hungary". During World War II, he was imprisoned by the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party. After the war, he opposed communism and the communist persecution in his country. As a result, he was tortured and given a life sentence in a 1949 show trial that generated worldwide condemnation, including a United Nations resolution. After eight years in prison, he was freed in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and granted political asylum by the United States embassy in Budapest, where Mindszenty lived for the next fifteen years. He was finally allowed to leave the country in 1971. He died in exile in 1975 in Vienna, Austria.

Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov, popularly known as Klim Voroshilov, was a prominent Soviet military officer and politician during the Stalin era. He was one of the original five Marshals of the Soviet Union, along with Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army Alexander Yegorov, and three senior commanders, Vasily Blyukher, Semyon Budyonny, and Mikhail Tukhachevsky.

Results

Party	Votes	%	Seats
Party	Votes	%	Constituency	National list	Total
Independent Smallholders Party	2,697,137	57.0	216	29	245
Hungarian Social Democratic Party	823,250	17.4	60	9	69
Hungarian Communist Party	801,986	17.0	61	9	70
National Peasant Party	324,772	6.9	20	3	23
Civic Democratic Party	76,393	1.6	2	0	2
Hungarian Radical Party	5,763	0.1	0	0	0
Invalid/blank votes	44,244	–	–	–	–
Total	4,773,545	100	359	50	409
Registered voters/turnout	5,160,499	92.6	–	–	–
Source: Nohlen & Stöver

Aftermath

After the election, on 9 November the four major parties divided the portfolios. The arrangement, in which the Smallholders took the Interior while the Communists obtained Finance, was rejected by Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, who instructed Voroshilov to renegotiate Interior and a deputy premier post for the Communists.^[8] A debate on the form of the state also ensued; Mindszenty led a vigorous monarchist campaign but despite some uncertainty among the Smallholders, a republic was chosen.

Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik, and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin. Molotov served as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (Premier) from 1930 to 1941, and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1939 to 1949 and from 1953 to 1956. He served as First Deputy Premier from 1942 to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev. Molotov was removed from all positions in 1961 after several years of obscurity.

The Smallholders' leader, Zoltán Tildy, was elected president on 1 February 1946, while Ferenc Nagy became Prime Minister of a government in which the Smallholders had half the portfolios. The Communists received the Interior (László Rajk) and Deputy Premier (Mátyás Rákosi) posts, as well as transport and social welfare. Enlisting the support of the Social Democrat and Peasant Party ministers, they would exploit these positions with tactical skill and ruthlessness^[9] against a Smallholder majority hesitant to take a tough line against the Soviet-supported left-wing grouping, especially after the Left Wing Bloc was created on 5 March, emphasizing the exacerbation of class warfare and the need to proceed with social revolution.^[10]

Zoltán Tildy, was an influential leader of Hungary, who served as Prime Minister from 1945–1946 and President from 1946 until 1948 in the post-war period before the seizure of power by Soviet-backed communists.

Ferenc Nagy was a Hungarian politician of the Smallholders Party. He was a Speaker of the National Assembly of Hungary from 29 November 1945 to 5 February 1946 and a member of the High National Council from 7 December 1945 to 2 February 1946.

László Rajk was a Hungarian Communist politician, who served as Minister of Interior and Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was an important organizer of the Hungarian Communists' power, but he eventually fell victim to Mátyás Rákosi's show trials.

Notes

↑ Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) Elections in Europe: A data handbook, p899 ISBN 978-3-8329-5609-7
↑ Borhi, p.77-8
↑ Kontler, p.395-6
↑ Andorka, Rudolf et al. A Society Transformed, p.8. Central European University Press (1999), ISBN 963-9116-49-1
↑ Wittenberg, Jason. Crucibles of Political Loyalty, p.56. Cambridge University Press (2006), ISBN 0-521-84912-8
1 2 3 Kontler, p.396
↑ Duchen, Claire and Bandhauer-Schoffmann, Irene. When the War was Over, p.135. Continuum International Publishing Group (2000), ISBN 0-7185-0180-2
↑ Borhi, p.77
↑ For instance labelling the Smallholders as "reactionaries". Control of the Interior Ministry and especially the security police helped the Communists marginalise political opponents one by one. Selected assassinations, sabotage of opposition parties' offices and the closure of Catholic youth organisations were among the methods employed. Best, Antony, et al. International History of the Twentieth Century, p.217. Routledge (2003), ISBN 0-415-20739-8
↑ Kontler, p.396-7

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References

Borhi, László. Hungary in the Cold War, 1945-1956. Central European University Press (2004), ISBN 963-9241-80-6
Kontler, László. A History of Hungary. Palgrave Macmillan (2002), ISBN 1-4039-0316-6

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[NS-1] Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) Elections in Europe: A data handbook, p899 ISBN 978-3-8329-5609-7

[2] Borhi, p.77-8

[3] Kontler, p.395-6

[4] Andorka, Rudolf et al. A Society Transformed, p.8. Central European University Press (1999), ISBN 963-9116-49-1

[5] Wittenberg, Jason. Crucibles of Political Loyalty, p.56. Cambridge University Press (2006), ISBN 0-521-84912-8

[Kontler396-6] 1 2 3 Kontler, p.396

[7] Duchen, Claire and Bandhauer-Schoffmann, Irene. When the War was Over, p.135. Continuum International Publishing Group (2000), ISBN 0-7185-0180-2

[8] Borhi, p.77

[9] For instance labelling the Smallholders as "reactionaries". Control of the Interior Ministry and especially the security police helped the Communists marginalise political opponents one by one. Selected assassinations, sabotage of opposition parties' offices and the closure of Catholic youth organisations were among the methods employed. Best, Antony, et al. International History of the Twentieth Century, p.217. Routledge (2003), ISBN 0-415-20739-8

[10] Kontler, p.396-7