Imre Nagy

Imre Nagy
Nagy in 1945
Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Hungarian People's Republic
In office
24 October 1956 – 4 November 1956
Chairman of the PresidencyIstván Dobi
Deputy
List
First SecretaryErnő Gerő
János Kádár
Preceded byAndrás Hegedűs
Succeeded byJános Kádár
In office
4 July 1953 – 18 April 1955
Chairman of the PresidencyIstván Dobi
Deputy
List
First SecretaryMátyás Rákosi
Preceded byMátyás Rákosi
Succeeded byAndrás Hegedüs
Minister of Foreign Affairs
In office
2 November 1956 – 4 November 1956
Prime MinisterHimself
Preceded byImre Horváth
Succeeded byImre Horváth
Speaker of the National Assembly
In office
16 September 1947 – 8 June 1949
Preceded byÁrpád Szabó
Succeeded byKároly Olt
Minister of the Interior
In office
15 November 1945 – 20 March 1946
Prime MinisterZoltán Tildy
Ferenc Nagy
Preceded byFerenc Erdei
Succeeded byLászló Rajk
Minister of Agriculture
In office
22 December 1944 – 15 November 1945
Prime MinisterBéla Miklós
Preceded byFidél Pálffy
Succeeded byBéla Kovács
Additional Positions
Member of the National Assembly
In office
21 December 1944 – 29 April 1955
Parliamentary groupMKP (to 1948)
MDP (from 1948)
Left Bloc (1946–47)
Member of the Politburo of the MKP/MDP/MSZMP
In office
21 May 1945 – 3 September 1949
In office
1 March 1951 – 14 April 1955
In office
24 October 1956 – 7 November 1956
Personal details
Born(1896-06-07)7 June 1896
Kaposvár, Somogy County, Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary
Died16 June 1958(1958-06-16) (aged 62)
Budapest, Hungarian People's Republic
Cause of deathExecution by hanging
NationalityHungarian
Political partyCommunist Party of the Soviet Union
Social Democratic Party of Hungary
Hungarian Communist Party,
Hungarian Working People's Party,
Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party
Spouse
Mária Égető (1902–1978)
(m. 1925)
ChildrenErzsébet
Military service
Allegiance Austria-Hungary
 Soviet Russia
Branch/serviceAustro-Hungarian Army (Royal Hungarian Honvéd) (1914–1916)
Red Army (1918)
Years of service1914–1916
1918
RankCorporal
Unit17th Royal Hungarian Honvéd Infantry Regiment (1915)
19th Machine Gun Battalion (1916)
Battles/wars

Imre Nagy (/ˈɪmrə ˈnɒ/ IM-rə NOJ;[1] Hungarian: [ˈnɒɟ ˈimrɛ]; 7 June 1896 – 16 June 1958) was a Hungarian communist politician who served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers (de facto Prime Minister) 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.

Born to a peasant family, Nagy was apprenticed as a locksmith before being drafted in World War I. Nagy was a committed communist from soon after the Russian Revolution, and through the 1920s he engaged in underground party activity in Hungary. Living in the Soviet Union from 1930, he served the Soviet NKVD secret police as an informer from 1933 to 1941. Nagy returned to Hungary shortly before the end of World War II, and served in various offices as the Hungarian Working People's Party (MDP) took control of Hungary in the late 1940s and the country entered the Soviet sphere of influence. In 1944 and 1945, he was Hungary's Minister of Agriculture, where he carried out land divisions that won him widespread popularity among the peasantry. He served as Interior Minister of Hungary from 1945 to 1946. Nagy became prime minister in 1953 and attempted to relax some of the harshest aspects of Mátyás Rákosi's Stalinist regime, but was subverted and eventually forced out of the government in 1955 by Rákosi's continuing influence as General Secretary of the MDP. Nagy remained popular with writers, intellectuals, and the common people, who saw him as an icon of reform against the hard-line elements in the Soviet-backed regime.

The outbreak of the Hungarian Revolution on 23 October 1956 saw Nagy elevated to the position of Prime Minister on 24 October as a central demand of the revolutionaries and common people. Nagy's reformist faction gained full control of the government, admitted non-communist politicians, dissolved the ÁVH secret police, promised democratic reforms, and unilaterally withdrew Hungary from the Warsaw Pact on 1 November. The Soviet Union launched a massive military invasion of Hungary on 4 November, forcibly deposing Nagy, who fled to the Embassy of Yugoslavia in Budapest. Nagy was lured out of the embassy under false promises on 22 November and was arrested and deported to Romania. On 16 June 1958, Nagy was tried and executed for treason alongside his closest allies, and his body was buried in an unmarked grave.

In June 1989, Nagy and other prominent figures of the 1956 Revolution were rehabilitated and reburied with full honours, an event that played a key role in the collapse of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party regime.

  1. ^ Olausson, Lena; Sangster, Catherine (2006). Oxford BBC Guide to Pronunciation. Oxford University Press. p. 266. ISBN 0-19-280710-2.