Imre Nagy was a Hungarian communist politician who served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Hungarian People's Republic from 1953 to 1955. In 1956 Nagy became leader of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 against the Soviet-backed government, for which he was sentenced to death and executed two years later. He was not related to previous agrarianist Prime Minister Ferenc Nagy.
The State Protection Authority was the secret police of the People's Republic of Hungary from 1945 to 1956. The ÁVH was conceived as an external appendage of the Soviet Union's KGB in Hungary responsible for supporting the ruling Hungarian Working People's Party and persecuting political criminals. The ÁVH gained a reputation for brutality during a series of purges but was gradually reined in under the government of Imre Nagy, a moderate reformer, after he was appointed Prime Minister of Hungary in 1953. The ÁVH was dissolved by Nagy's revolutionary government during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and succeeded by the Ministry of Internal Affairs III.
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956, also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was an attempted countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the policies caused by the government's subordination to the Soviet Union (USSR). The uprising lasted 12 days before being crushed by Soviet tanks and troops on 4 November 1956. Thousands were killed and wounded and nearly a quarter of a million Hungarians fled the country.
The Hungarian Working People's Party was the ruling communist party of Hungary from 1948 to 1956.
János József Kádár, born János József Czermanik, was a Hungarian Communist leader and the General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, a position he held for 32 years. Declining health led to his retirement in 1988, and he died in 1989 after being hospitalized for pneumonia.
Ernő Gerő was a Hungarian Communist leader in the period after World War II and briefly in 1956 the most powerful man in Hungary as the leader of its ruling communist party.
Pál Maléter was the military leader of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
Mátyás Rákosi was a Hungarian communist politician who was the de facto leader of Hungary from 1947 to 1956. He served first as General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party from 1945 to 1948 and then as General Secretary of the Hungarian Working People's Party from 1948 to 1956.
Károly Grósz was a Hungarian communist politician, who served as the General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party from 1988 to 1989.
Ferenc Nagy was a Hungarian politician of the Smallholders Party who served as Prime Minister of Hungary from 1946 until his forced resignation in 1947. He was also a Speaker of the National Assembly of Hungary and a member of the High National Council from 1945 to 1946. Nagy was the second democratically elected prime minister of Hungary, and would be the last until 1990 not to be a Communist or fellow traveler. The subsequent Hungarian prime minister Imre Nagy was unrelated to him.
József Dudás, was a Hungarian politician and resistance fighter.
The Bridge at Andau is a 1957 nonfiction book by the American author James Michener chronicling the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Living in Austria in the 1950s, Michener was at the border of Austria and Hungary during the period in which a significant wave of refugees fled Hungary.
The Hungarian People's Republic was a one-party socialist state from 20 August 1949 to 23 October 1989. It was governed by the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, which was under the influence of the Soviet Union. Pursuant to the 1944 Moscow Conference, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin had agreed that after the war Hungary was to be included in the Soviet sphere of influence. The HPR remained in existence until 1989, when opposition forces brought the end of communism in Hungary.
Goulash Communism, also known as refrigerator communism, Kádárism or the Hungarian Thaw, is the variety of state socialism in Hungary following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. János Kádár and the Hungarian People's Republic imposed policies with the goal to create high-quality living standards for the people of Hungary coupled with economic reforms. These reforms fostered a sense of well-being and relative cultural freedom in Hungary with the reputation of being "the happiest barracks" of the Eastern Bloc during the 1960s to the 1970s. With elements of regulated market economics as well as an improved human rights record, it represented a quiet reform and deviation from the Stalinist principles applied to Hungary in the previous decade.
Dr. Béla Király was a Hungarian army officer before, during, and after World War II. After the war, he was sentenced to death under the Soviet-allied regime, but was later released. After his release, he commanded the National Guard in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. He then fled to the United States, where he became an academic historian. He returned to Hungary after the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and was elected a member of Hungarian Parliament.
Géza Losonczy was a Hungarian journalist and politician. He was associated with the reformist faction of the Hungarian communist party.
The Hungarian Writers Union was founded in 1945 at the end of World War II. Initially the union was intended to be an organizational body through which the interests of writers in Hungary could be represented. It grew to become a major voice of dissension against the Communist regime in Hungary during the 1950s and had a significant role in sparking the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
Erzsébet Nagy was a Hungarian writer and translator, and the only child of the former Prime Minister of Hungary, Imre Nagy, who was executed following the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
Béla Kovács was a Hungarian politician, who served as Minister of Agriculture from 1945 to 1946 and in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
Imre Nagy first became Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Hungarian People's Republic on 4 July 1953 upon the resignation of Mátyás Rákosi, forming a government more moderate than that of his predecessor which attempted to reform the system. However, Rákosi remained First Secretary of the ruling Hungarian Working People's Party, and he was ultimately able to use his influence force Nagy out of office in April 1955.
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