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Hungary Coalition Government and Communist Takeover
The Hungarian Communist Party (HCP) enjoyed scant
popular
support after the toppling of Bela Kun's short-lived
Hungarian
Soviet Republic in 1919 and the subsequent white terror.
During
World War II, a communist cell headed by Laszlo Rajk, a
veteran
of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and a former student
communist
leader, operated underground within the country. Matyas
Rakosi
led a second, Moscow-based group whose members were later
called
the "Muscovites." After the Soviet Red Army invaded
Hungary in
September 1944, Rajk's organization emerged from hiding,
and the
Muscovites returned to their homeland. Rakosi's close ties
with
the Soviet occupiers enhanced his influence within the
party, and
a rivalry developed between the Muscovites and Rajk's
followers.
Between the invasion and the end of the war, party
membership
rose significantly. Although party rolls listed only about
3,000
names in November 1944, membership had swelled to about
500,000
by October 1945.
Hungary's postwar political order began to take shape
even
before Germany's surrender. In October 1944, Britain's
Prime
Minister Winston Churchill and Foreign Minister Anthony
Eden
agreed with Stalin that after the war the Soviet Union
would
enjoy a 75 percent to 80 percent influence in Hungary,
Bulgaria,
and Romania, while the British would have a 20 percent to
25
percent share. On December 22, 1944, a provisional
government
emerged in Debrecen that was made up of the Provisional
National
Assembly, in which communist representatives outnumbered
those of
the other "antifascist" parties, and a cabinet, whose
members
included a general and two other military officers of the
old
regime, two communists, two Social Democrats, two members
of the
Independent Smallholders' Party, one member of the
National
Peasant Party, and one unaffiliated member. The
provisional
government concluded an armistice with the Soviet Union on
January 20, 1945, while fighting still raged in the
western part
of the country. The armistice established the Allied
Control
Commission, with Soviet, American, and British
representatives,
which held complete sovereignty over the country. The
commission's chairman, Marshal Kliment Voroshilov, a
member of
Stalin's inner circle, exercised absolute control.
Stalin decided against an immediate communist seizure
of
power in Hungary; rather, he instructed HCP leaders to
take a
gradualist approach and share power with other parties in
freely
elected coalition governments. Stalin informed Rakosi that
a
communist takeover would be delayed ten to fifteen years
in order
to deflect Western criticism of rapid communist takeovers
in
Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, and the Soviet zone of Germany.
Stalin
desired a quick return to normal economic activity to
rebuild the
Soviet Union and sought to avoid a confrontation with the
Allies,
who still had troops in Europe. The members of the HCP who
had
worked underground during the war opposed Stalin's
gradualist
approach and argued for immediate establishment of a
dictatorship
of the proletariat.
In April 1945, after Soviet troops had rid Hungary of
the
Nazis, the government moved from Debreceu to Budapest, and
a
second, expanded Provisional National Assembly was chosen.
With
the support of representatives of the trade unions and the
Social
Democratic Party, the HCP enjoyed an absolute majority of
the
assembly's 495 seats. The provisional government remained
in
power until November 15, 1945, when voters dealt the HCP
an
unexpected setback in a free election. The Independent
Smallholders' Party won 245 seats in the National
Assembly; the
HCP, 70; the Social Democratic Party, 69; the National
Peasant
Party, 21; and the Civic Democratic Party, 2. The National
Assembly proclaimed the Hungarian Republic on February 1,
1946,
and two Smallholder-led coalitions under Zoltan Tildy and
Ferenc
Nagy governed the country until May 1947.
The HCP soon formed a leftist alliance with the Social
Democratic Party and the National Peasant Party and gained
control of several key offices, including the leadership
of the
security police and the army general staff. Voroshilov
vetoed an
agreement reached by the coalition members to name a
member of
the Independent Smallholders' Party to head the Ministry
of
Interior. A National Peasant Party member loyal to the HCP
won
the post and made the police a powerful tool of the
communists.
The National Assembly undermined freedoms guaranteed in
Hungary's
constitution when it banned statements that could be
interpreted
as hostile to the democratic order or the country's
international
esteem. Later, as Hungary's democratic order became
identified
with HCP policies, the law was used to silence legitimate
opponents.
In the immediate postwar period, the government pursued
economic reconstruction and land reform
(see Postwar Societal Transformation
, ch. 2). Hungary had been devastated in the
last
years of World War II. About 24 percent of its industrial
base
was destroyed. Many of the large landowners and
industrialists
fled Hungary in advance of the Soviet Red Army.
Reconstruction
proceeded rapidly, expedited by gradual nationalization of
mines,
electric plants, the four largest concerns in heavy
industry, and
the ten largest banks. In 1945 the government also carried
out a
radical land reform, expropriating all holdings larger
than
fifty-seven hectares and distributing them to the
country's
poorest peasants. Nevertheless, the peasants received
portions
barely large enough for self-sufficiency. Finally, the
government
introduced a new currency--the forint--to help curb high
inflation.
Using methods Rakosi later called "salami tactics," the
HCP
strengthened its position in the coalition by discrediting
leaders of rival parties as "reactionaries" or
"antidemocratic,"
forcing their resignation from the government and
sometimes
prompting their arrest. In 1945 ex-members of Horthy's
regime
lost their positions. A year later, members of the
Smallholders'
Party and the Social Democratic Party were ousted from
power. In
late 1946, leaders of the Smallholders' Party were
arrested. In
1947 the Soviet Union ordered the arrest of Bela Kovacs,
the
secretary general of the Independent Smallholders' Party,
on the
false charge of plotting to overthrow the government. The
Independent Smallholders' Party was dissolved after Ferenc
Nagy
resigned his position as prime minister. The leftist bloc
gained
a small lead over its rivals in the 1947 general
elections. The
HCP tallied only 22 percent of the vote, but fraud tainted
the
election, and suspicions arose that the party actually
enjoyed
less support.
The Treaty of Paris, signed on February 10, 1947,
required
Hungary to pay US$200 million in reparations to the Soviet
Union,
US$50 million to Czechoslovakia, and US$50 million to
Yugoslavia.
Hungary also had to transfer a piece of territory to
Czechoslovakia, leaving Hungary with slightly less
territory than
it had had after the Treaty of Trianon. Stalin had already
returned Transylvania to the Romanians to reinforce the
position
of the procommunist Prime Minister Petru Groza.
Thereafter, the
Romanians' treatment of the Hungarian minority in
Transylvania
became an irritant in relations between the two countries
(see Relations with Other Communist Neighbors
, ch. 4).
Data as of September 1989
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