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With the end of communism in Hungary in 1989, Marxist historiography collapsed and social history came into its own, especially the study of the demographic patterns of the early modern period. Research priorities have shifted toward urban history and the conditions of everyday life.
Jun 3, 2020 · Mainland Hungary was shaken from 1918 to 1921 by violence perpetrated both by occupying troops and by Hungarians against each other. Four months of communist "Red Terror" in 1919 was...
- Overview
- Hungary in the Soviet orbit
- Political developments
- Economic developments
As in 1920, a new regime recognized the defeat of its predecessor. As early as December 1944, a makeshift Provisional National Assembly had accepted a government list and program presented to it by communist agents following in the wake of the Soviet armies. Beginning cautiously, the communists announced that the new Hungary was to rest on “all its...
As in 1920, a new regime recognized the defeat of its predecessor. As early as December 1944, a makeshift Provisional National Assembly had accepted a government list and program presented to it by communist agents following in the wake of the Soviet armies. Beginning cautiously, the communists announced that the new Hungary was to rest on “all its...
The full political takeover proceeded systematically, although not according to any timetable, because the communists, misjudging feeling in the country, allowed the first elections (November 1945) to be relatively free. Only the parties of the coalition were allowed to contest them; but the adherents of the proscribed parties voted for the Smallholders, who received an absolute majority. The head of the Soviet mission, however, insisted that the coalition must be maintained; a Smallholder was allowed to be prime minister, but the Ministry of the Interior, with the control of the police, was given to the communists. Pressure and intimidation were then applied to the Smallholders to expel their more-courageous members as “fascists,” and in the next manipulated election (August 1947) the Smallholders polled only 15 percent of the votes cast. The communists had meanwhile forced the Social Democrats to form a “workers’ bloc” with them. Although the pressure was considerable, the bloc still polled only 45 percent of the votes (other parties were allowed to participate this time). The communists then forced the Social Democrats to join them in a single Workers’ Party, from which recalcitrants were expelled.
In the next election, in May 1949, voting was open, and the voters were presented with a single list, on which candidates identified as Smallholders and National Peasants were actually crypto-communists. In late summer a new constitution was enacted, which was a copy of the constitution of the Soviet Union. It was promulgated on August 20—Hungary’s traditional St. Stephen’s Day—specifically with the goal of transforming that national holiday connected with Hungary’s Christianization into the politically inspired Constitution Day. With this constitution, Hungary—a republic since February 1, 1946—became a “people’s republic.” Although its president (Zoltán Tildy) and for a while its prime ministers (Ferenc Nagy, then Lajos Dinnyés) were Smallholders, all real power rested with the Hungarian Workers’ [communist] Party, controlled by its first secretary, Mátyás Rákosi.
Finally, the party’s “Muscovite” wing turned on its “national” wing. The leader of this latter group, László Rajk, was executed on questionable charges in October 1949, and his chief adherents were similarly executed or imprisoned. Meanwhile, hundreds were executed or imprisoned as war criminals, many of them for no offense other than loyalty to the Horthy regime. Many thousands more were interned. The State Security Department, replaced in 1948 by the State Security Authority, was omnipotent. The judiciary, civil service, and army were purged, and party orthodoxy became the criterion for positions in them. The trade unions were made into mere executants of party orders.
Those who were distrusted were collected, convicted, and sent to various internment camps, the most notorious of which was the camp at Recsk in north-central Hungary, which functioned in great secrecy between 1950 and 1953. In May–June 1951, about 12,700 upper- and upper-middle-class people were driven out of their apartments in Budapest and deported to small peasant villages on the Great Alföld or to scattered labour camps on the mud flats of Hortobágy in the vicinity of Debrecen.
The communists’ economic program, like their political program, could not be realized immediately, because in 1945 Hungary was in a state of economic chaos worse even than that of 1918. This time the country had been a theatre of war. Many cities were in ruins, and communications were wrecked; the retreating Germans had destroyed the bridges between Buda and Pest and had taken with them all they could of the country’s portable wealth. The Soviet armies lived off the land, and the Soviet Union took its share of reparations in kind, placing its own values on the objects seized. It also took over former German assets in Hungary, including Jewish property confiscated during the Nazi occupation.
A three-year plan introduced in August 1947 was devoted chiefly to the repair of immediate damage. This was declared completed, ahead of schedule, in December 1949. By then the communists were in full political control, and measures nationalizing banking, most industry, and most internal and all foreign trade had been enacted. Hungary joined other Soviet-bloc countries in founding Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) in 1949. The land outside the big estates was not touched at first, but in 1948 Rákosi announced a policy of collectivization of agriculture. Three forms were envisaged: state farms and two types of cooperative. Peasants were forced by various pressures into the cooperatives, the character of which approached ever more closely that of the state farms.
Communist rule in the People's Republic of Hungary came to an end in 1989 by a peaceful transition to a democratic system. After the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was suppressed by Soviet forces, Hungary remained a communist country. As the Soviet Union weakened at the end of the 1980s, the Eastern Bloc disintegrated.
The HPR remained in existence until 1989, when opposition forces brought the end of communism in Hungary. The state considered itself the heir to the Republic of Councils in Hungary, which was formed in 1919 as the first communist state created after the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR).
History of Hungary - Postcommunist Hungary: After it had become evident that the existing communist regime was doomed, the transitional government headed by Németh (November 1988–May 1990) began a systematic dialogue with the opposition.
At a recent conference in Budapest on the revolution of 1956 and the decline of communism, one of the visiting scholars made a plea for. remembering, not with nostalgia of course, but with an eye to discovering historical truth, sorting out values, and evaluating the meaning of the communist era. It is sound advice.
